by Shane Henson — January 13, 2014—Lutron Electronics and the Building Technologies Division of Siemens Industry recently announced a collaborative development effort that brings together two of their flagship products to help make commercial buildings more energy efficient.
The Lutron Quantum total light management system, which controls lights, shades, and small appliances, and the Siemens APOGEE wireless building automation and control system, which allows multiple building systems to work together regardless of their architecture, can now be easily integrated together via BACnet, the companies say.
Having these two powerful systems sharing information not only helps make a building more energy efficient, but also can help improve maintenance efficiencies, allowing facilities managers and building owners to better evaluate the energy usage within their buildings, say the companies.
The BACnet protocol was designed to allow communication of building automation and control systems for applications such as heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) control, lighting control, access control, and fire detection systems and their associated equipment. BACnet allows computerized building automation devices to exchange information, regardless of the particular building service they perform. Proper communication between building automation devices is critical for maximizing building energy efficiency, indoor air quality, and other aspects of “green” buildings, Siemens explains.
“By working closely with Siemens to jointly test the BACnet integration between the Quantum and APOGEE systems, we are able to provide facility managers with a better user experience and ‘single pane of glass’ for managing their different building systems,” said Mark Jenner, new business alliances director at Lutron. “Instead of disparate pieces of software to manage all of the different building systems—lighting, shading, HVAC, door access, fire/safety, energy metering—BACnet makes it possible to integrate all of the software tools into one, saving valuable time and maximizing efficiencies.”
As part of their efforts, Lutron and Siemens produced a technical whitepaper offering “how to” instructions for integrating the systems. It is available to all Siemens branch offices and APOGEE dealers, as well as to Lutron sales and field service representatives. The technical paper can guide consulting-specifying engineers in helping to design an efficient system.
Lutron Electronics, headquartered in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania, offers more than 17,000 lighting and other energy-saving products, sold in more than 100 countries around the world.
The Siemens Building Technologies Division, based in Zug, Switzerland, is a leader in the market for safe and secure, energy-efficient and environment-friendly buildings and infrastructures. As technology partner, service provider, system integrator and product vendor, Building Technologies has offerings for safety and security as well as building automation, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and energy management.
