ATLANTA - Six proposed addenda to the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers’ (ASHRAE’s) BACnet standards have been recommended for public review.

The addenda are expected to be released for public review March 16. If approved, they would become part of Standard 135, BACnet® - a Data Communication Protocol for Building Automation and Control Networks, and Standard 135.1, Method of Test Conformance to BACnet®.

“This was a barnstormer session,” said Bill Swan, BACnet chairman. “The committee has been working hard to expand BACnet’s coverage of building systems, and several items came out together.”

Proposed addendum j to BACnet-2004, will add physical access control to BACnet’s support for building automation.

“Our committee has worked on these proposals for four years to ensure that we address the state-of-the-art practices of the security industry while building on the proven BACnet platform,” said David Ritter, convener of the BACnet Life-Safety and Security Working Group, which is comprised of representatives from both the HVAC and physical security industries from around the globe.

Addendum j rounds out the working group access control extensions to BACnet, which began with the access door object presented in addendum f. The committee is actively soliciting comments on these extensions from the access control industry.

Proposed addendum g to 135-2004, a new means for securing BACnet network communications, provides part of the base on which proposed addendum j is built. Developed by the Network Security Working Group, addendum g draws on significant advances in encryption and authentication technologies since BACnet became a standard.

Proposed addendum 135-2004 i presents several extensions to the BACnet standard to support lighting control systems.

Also recommended for review are 135h, which would include miscellaneous changes to the standard, 135.1b, involving new and revised tests, and 135.1c, updating references in 135.1 from 135-2001 to 135-2004.

Publication date: 03/05/2007