The "Aha" Factor

To simply say that the building was environmentally friendly was all well and good, but the NRDC wanted to wow visitors with real-time, visual evidence of the building's extraordinary performance efficiency. The organization tapped Southern California Edison (SCE), the electric utility, to develop an energy model for the building, plus a public exhibit located in the Environmental Action Center on the building's first floor, displaying up-to-the-minute energy consumption.

Dubbed the "Green Building Exhibit," the kiosk consists of a monitor built into a larger wall exhibit with pictures of the building and text that explains what makes a building green. On the monitor are four panels depicting solar energy production, water efficiency, heating and cooling energy consumption, and lighting energy consumption. A touch-screen feature allows visitors to call up current energy statistics.

"It's cool to read about what makes a building green," said Evelyne Slavin, environmental action center associate at the NRDC. "But to actually see that right now we are saving 45 percent on energy is what produces the ‘wow' reaction from people."

To obtain the input for this information, SCE needed a network of sensors and an intelligent device to process the data for display. The utility turned to ASW Engineering Management Consultants, headquartered in Tustin, Calif., which specializes in helping clients identify and implement measures to increase energy efficiency, improve system operation, and reduce operating costs. The SCE team, including ASW, developed the high-level design for the energy-monitoring system, including the points to be collected, the type of points (i.e., digital or analog), and the panels and instrumentation.

A key concern of the SCE team was how to process the data from the sensors. LEED certification requires facilities to comply with the long-term, continuous measurement of performance as stated in "Option B: Methods by Technology" of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP). A PC-based server would be the traditional solution, but the team thought that would add thousands of dollars of expense for the PC and Microsoft operating system. It would also require the necessary "front-end" software to provide a graphical user interface. The team thought there would also be ongoing maintenance issues, such as Windows security upgrades and service packs - a responsibility that the NRDC did not want to take on.

"To eliminate the costs and inherent maintenance problems of a PC, we chose a LonWorks-based network and the Echelon i.LON 100 Internet Server as an embedded firmware solution," said Dennis Rowan, senior project engineer with ASW.

"The result was a solution more robust than the PC alternative, and one that could become a standard for all new commercial buildings," added David Wylie, a principal and cofounder of ASW.

LonWorks is an interoperable control system designed to allow intelligent devices to communicate peer-to-peer over simplified networks. The end result is an open architecture and economical installation, all designed to easily program, customize, operate, service, and expand. The i.LON 100 Internet Server acts as a Web server, which eliminates the need for a separate PC server. In the eyes of the ASW/SCE team, the result is lower capital investment and, most importantly, no maintenance.

SCE provided funding to VaCom Technologies of La Verne, Calif., an authorized network integrator for Echelon LonWorks, to furnish the LonWorks-based monitoring network and i.LON 100 servers. Twenty-two separate sensors were installed and connected to several LonWorks LonPoint digital and analog input modules to collect data on electric, gas, and water usage, as well as solar energy generation, weather conditions, etc. This information is fed to three i.LON 100s, which have the capacity to store up to five years of historical data, with one of the i.LONs acting as a web server that delivers the processed information to the monitor in a browser-based format for display.

A separate LonWorks device, known as the analytics node, processes the raw data using a set of equations furnished by the SCE team to calculate how the building is doing compared to a "typical" building of the same size.

Efficient Install

LonWorks' reputation for ease of installation and reliability were put to the test on this project. Due to the last-minute scheduling of the grand opening of the building - complete with a host of celebrities including Robert Redford - VaCom was given just one day to install the system.

"We had such a diverse range of sensors, I was certain there would be some issues with reading data," said Doug Scott, president of VaCom. "But we installed and commissioned the system all in one day, and everything worked as designed."

The Green Building Exhibit continues to perform as efficiently as the building.

"The reason we created this exhibit was to publicize the availability and the efficiency of green technology," said Slavin. "It's very powerful for people to see in real time how much energy we are using, how much we are saving, and how easy it is to do that. This is a wonderful way to create awareness about what we can all do for the environment."

Publication date: 04/12/2004