Buildings Magazine

The rapid development of cloud-based applications and the evolution of networking technologies have set the stage for a radical change in how building services will be delivered and managed going forward.

Building control and metering capabilities that were once only achievable through large scale investments in singular, proprietary systems are now accessible to all building owners.

Not Your Father’s Multi-point Meters

Today’s multi-point electrical submeters are a far cry from their early space-saving ancestors. With advanced, embedded computing capabilities and a “reserved” footprint in a building’s electrical closet — modern multi-point electrical meters are positioned to play a critical role in delivering cost-effective building management capabilities to property managers and owners that don’t have building automation systems already installed, or have systems that are old and antiquated.

The Internet of Things
and the Promise of Big Data

Today local devices (desktop computers, mobile
phones, home appliances, security systems, you
name it) have become information and data grooming
instruments connected to a constellation of ready-
to-consume applications. Through web services
interoperability, this Internet of Things (Io T) can now share information
to form greater functionality — superseding the old locked-in single
vendor models with greater capability and better visibility of data for all
stakeholders. This is the promise of Big Data, where the whole is greater
than the sum of its parts.

The benefits for building management networks to follow this same multi-vendor path are clear — more energy management and building control functionality that is easier and cheaper to deploy.

The Building Internet of Things

The difference between the Internet of Things (Io T) and the Building Internet of Things (BIo T) is that complex buildings require an intermediary to manage multiple and sometimes competing entities. Critical building systems, multiple stakeholder interests, security concerns, and the sheer volume of instrumentation necessitate some form of building systems access, edge computing, and usage control. This is achieved via a gateway device that uses open, standards-based networking and communications protocols that allow information to flow from the instrumentation layer to the application layer—and beyond.

Benefits All Round

The benefits to property managers and building owners of delivering the Io T model via a standards-based BIo T gateway are huge, including;

From Space Saver to Building Information Cornerstone: The Evolution of Multi-point Meters

making the right information available to the right people, at the right time; gaining unobstructed access to new and emerging energy management and building control applications; vendor independence and consumer choice (no lock-in); plug and play replacement of components at any level; and future-proof durable systems with software that can be remotely upgraded.

Web Centric Building Management Services

Make no mistake, the future of building information management is about web-centric services. A building’s metering infrastructure — designed around open protocols and IP networking — is perfectly positioned to be a cost-effective enabler of those services by providing both metering and BIo T gateway capabilities.

In order to accomplish this, today’s and tomorrow’s multi-point meters have to address security issues, have multi-homing capabilities, use tagging and semantic data models, be fluent in internet protocols and open communication models, and have built-in logic and expansion capabilities for future-proof deployment — all in addition to maintaining accurate, flexible electrical measurement and building services monitoring.

Cloud-centric management is the future of building information.

The future of multi-point metering is moving beyond being simply a metering platform, to becoming a generic building information intelligence platform — cost justified by its built-in, valuable metering applications while enabling building owners and property managers to incrementally add energy management and building control measures directly from the meter.