Building Management System Energy Conservation
Energy conservation with a building management system is a beautiful thing. A BMS manages all your utilities by means of a computer. It regulates your air conditioning and your temperature control. Also, it regulates the lighting within the building.
During heavy usage or low usage like in the evening, it will turn your lights on and off. Also, it has an automatic turn-off feature for air conditioning and lights. It can do this in times where there aren’t any occupants within the building. Times like the evening or when people go to bed are key for energy conservation.
These building management systems are mostly used in big buildings. But they are developing systems that the regular homeowner can use. I got one in my home that regulates all the air, electricity, power, and lighting throughout the house. This has made it very cost-effective to use and saves on my utility bills.
Building Management Systems: Control of Systems Helps Efficiency
A building management system can turn on and off the utilities in a time of low usage. For example, during the day when you have so much daylight, it will turn down the lighting. In the evening if there are people in the building, it will increase the amount of lighting. But if nobody’s occupying the building in the evening, it will turn the lights off. We all worry about energy conservation and hoping our kids will turn off the lights. Well, you don’t need that anymore. Now you can depend on the BMS to do that. So it is a beautiful thing to have a building management system, and every building should have one.
At some point, society may require all new buildings to have a form of building management system. It is more cost-effective to have a BMS in place, and it will offset the costs of the waste of utilities.
Designing with Liability in Mind
You do hear concerns about hacking that can threaten a BMS. But we’ve never heard stories that substantiate the concerns. At the same time, it wouldn’t be surprising if somebody tried to do that. To hack the system to disrupt the operation of the building is a serious concern. This is because it’s possible to turn off the lighting or power. There’s also the potential to mess with the mechanical systems and to disrupt the operation of equipment within a building. I’m sure the case is there, but we haven’t seen it.
When we design a building, we design and install a building management system for that building. We work with the IT personnel of that building or that agency. This we do to make sure that the proper security factors are in place. That way, nobody can come in and hack it.
