DE
am 08.07.2024 - 08:12 Uhr
This requirement is also anchored in the latest version of the German Building Energy Act (GEG). It applies to commercial buildings, production facilities, office buildings, schools, and municipal buildings, among others. Many property operators must now quickly implement measures for digitization, transparency, and energy efficiency.
How can property owners and facility managers prepare for these requirements?
The key questions are answered in an interview with Dipl.-Ing. Christian Wild, Managing Director of ICONAG-Leittechnik in Idar-Oberstein, and Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Eike Hinck, AMEV chairman for the BACnet standard and energy management specialist at the City of Cologne's Building Management Department.
Wild: As of January 2025, all non-residential buildings with a total nominal capacity of more than 290 kW for heating and air conditioning must legally fulfill the following requirements:
Continuous monitoring, logging, and analysis of energy consumption, along with the ability to adjust energy usage.
Benchmarking of the building's energy efficiency.
Detection of efficiency losses in building systems.
Provision of information to the person responsible for technical building management, including options for improving energy efficiency.
Communication capability with connected building systems and other devices within the building, as well as interoperability with building systems from various proprietary technologies, devices, and manufacturers.
Hinck: A prerequisite is a standardized, manufacturer-independent communication protocol for building automation, such as BACnet. Additionally, the use of uniform structural designations for objects and functions is necessary.
Wild: New buildings are largely unproblematic, as building automation is already standard practice. Only the commissioning management required by §71a (6) of the GEG is new—but long overdue.
In existing buildings, however, significant retrofitting is necessary. It is unclear which technical solutions will be implemented where. To ensure communication between systems, numerous gateways will likely need to be installed. Alternatively, standard interfaces could be created at the management level. Wireless technologies like LoRa will be essential for continuous monitoring, logging, and energy consumption analysis. In any case, management software will be required to evaluate, compare, and efficiently intervene in system operations.
Hinck: The biggest issue in building automation within property portfolios is the variety of manufacturer-specific GA systems and their differing nomenclature. Existing GA systems on a property often do not communicate with one another—they operate autonomously.
Wild: We've relied on BACnet for a long time, but there was a gap in the BACnet world standard DIN EN ISO 16484-5, which many manufacturers exploited. Based on the fundamentally open BACnet communication, the first step is to make existing data interpretable. Specifically, data point designations must reveal which system and function are behind them. This is a monumental task.
Hinck: The EPBD mandates that by 2050, all public buildings must be zero-emission buildings. This means more than 3% of public buildings must undergo energy-efficient renovations each year. Besides future-proof regulations, adequate financial resources will be needed.
Wild: The BACtwin will close the aforementioned standardization gap in BACnet. The goal is for every property owner to specify a BACtwin tailored to their requirements for both renovation and new construction projects—regardless of the rulebook used. This ensures interpretability and machine-readability of building automation data and functions, while enabling true manufacturer independence. A defective controller from Company A can be easily replaced by one from Company B.
Hinck: Our summarized goals are:
No loss of information or data between planning and execution
Uniform GA structures across property portfolios
Automated GA verification
Creation of standardized systems using a modular principle
Hinck: The standardized user addressing system for GA functions allows them to be created and used as templates in planning tools. This means every system is built according to the same scheme. It enables automated verification of installed automation systems, forming the basis for both new and existing systems.
Wild: Beyond data interpretability and manufacturer independence, the benefits are extensive. The primary advantage is quality assurance by reducing errors in building automation and enabling 100% verifiability of functions during acceptance testing.
It also cuts costs, as planners won't need to start from scratch for every project. The BACtwin reduces development and coordination effort during planning, implementation, and replacement measures.
Hinck: Additionally, it creates the data foundation for many services urgently needed for the energy transition and legal compliance. Technical commissioning management and energy management are just the first examples. Furthermore, the property owner retains data sovereignty instead of transferring it to the cloud of a respective control company, enhancing investment security.
Wild: The BACtwin closes the standardization gap by expanding the classic building automation data point with its functional description. For example, a temperature value is not only described by its current state but also by its upper and lower limits, alarm priorities, deviation increments that trigger alerts, and more. BACtwin precisely defines which BACnet objects must be assigned to which systems and their properties.
From individual systems (such as a circulation pump), highly efficient assemblies (heating circuit distributors) and systems (heating systems) can be formed, which are then clearly described in terms of their communication capability.
Hinck: The BACtwin represents a unified, structured approach to creating GA projects. Special attention is given to the user addressing system, which establishes a cross-property systematic approach. Once defined by the property owner, the BACtwin becomes a mandatory part of all planning tasks, tenders, and contracts, making it a binding part of execution and acceptance.
Hinck: The AMEV guideline "BACtwin," currently in development, offers property owners a comprehensive template of standard objects (AMEV profiles) with parameters (object templates) to describe all typical systems.
Additionally, AMEV has further developed the user addressing system proposed in VDI 3814 Part 4.1, potentially creating a uniformly applicable addressing scheme for many property owners.
The AMEV guideline pursues four key points:
Updating the data model to reflect the latest technology
Introducing a manufacturer-neutral data model for GA
Defining an addressing system for BACnet objects in building automation
Project specifications for BACnet objects, including their properties
Wild: Traditional control companies with their proprietary solutions won't be thrilled. They can no longer offer projects on their own terms. Providers must open up under pressure from property owners and implement the feasibility of GA projects according to BACtwin in their systems.
Public administrations are the largest property owners in Germany. We expect this shift toward true manufacturer independence to spark genuine competition in building automation throughout the entire lifecycle.
Hinck: AMEV expects providers to create tools that enable automated, standardized implementation in planning, commissioning, and technical monitoring, along with the creation of standardized systems for property portfolios.
Powered by ModuleStudio 1.3.2
