Modern building: technical equipment dispatching and automation system

Engineering systems of modern buildings are notable for a great variety thereof: power supply, lighting, water- and heat supply, sewerage, heating, ventilation systems, etc. are among them. Many of these systems turn out to be interconnected, and convenience and safety of any person’s staying in the building depends on practically each of them. Here arises the following question: how are all those systems are to be made to operate with the maximum efficiency and minimum costs? 

Now the technical equipment dispatching and automation system (ACS and TED) is entrusted with that intricate problem.

Here are the main advantages of this system:

• Reduction of the expenses for power resources;
• Reduction of the expenses for services and materials;
• Creation of safe and secure conditions for people and equipment;
• Improvement of convenience.

As the practice suggests, dispatching system developed competently is paid off in 2-4 years of operation. After all, the intelligent dispatching system coupled with power-saving equipment permits to reduce the annual community charges by 15-20%, which is a great deal, for example, the annual community charges of a business center with the floor space about 50 000 square meters are about 100 dollars per 1 square meter. 

The dispatching and automation system offers to the user the following opportunities:

• Remote monitoring of the equipment condition;
• Prompt response to any emergency situations and malfunctions;
• Building systems remote control;
• Assessment of the load on equipment and forecasting of failures thereof;
• Computer-aided record of the equipment working conditions;
• Automatic monitoring and record of operational services’ actions.

Currently the dispatching system may be considered in general as a combination of three automation levels: actuators level, local automatics level and dispatching control level. It should be noted in this connection that the two lower levels are increasingly often combined into one in modern systems. Actuators also become intelligent increasingly often, and the main issue arising in the course of system creation is choosing the most efficient technology for data transmission between the device level and the dispatching level, and development of the most efficient dispatching control model. 

The modern building dispatching system should meet the following requirements:

1. Technology openness;
2. Unified solutions;
3. Equipment support by a great number of manufacturers;
4. Software support by a great number of manufacturers. 

Among the most popular dispatching systems one may distinguish those, which are based on BACNet, LonWorks and KNX/EIB technologies. Each of those systems has its advantages at a certain level of automation, and choosing of the optimal solution is the designer’s main task. Those technologies are supported at the modern market by all equipment manufacturers, and «ARMO-LINE» experts possess skills sufficient to equip the Customer’s object with a dispatching system based on any of those technologies or any combination thereof.

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