IoT enabled Smart Building Technologies

Smart Building technologies

What is Smart Building Technologies?

When the different systems within a building, such as heating and lighting, are integrated and communicate with each other in order to be more energy-efficient and to improve the occupant’s comfort levels, then the building can be called a “smart” building. and technologies used to make buildings smart called Smart building technologies.

Large buildings like offices, malls, schools, hotels, and hospitals use a lot of energy to function. These large buildings can use IoT based smart building technologies to improve the occupant’s experience and comfort levels in addition to saving energy costs by being more energy-efficient.

Smart Building technologies
HVAC- Heating Ventilation and AirConditioning System

image credit: ElasticComputeFarm/Pixabay

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Major building systems like HVAC (Heating Ventilation and AirConditioning), lighting, power, water, fire alarms, and even access systems and elevators can be connected to sensors and a control system using IoT technology. This enables them to communicate data with each other and also display the data in a user-friendly way to the central control system.

Concise, meaningful and user-friendly data helps the building management to take better decisions. The building managers can see the overall performance of the building operations. They can also see the areas which have consistently high energy consumption and can pay more attention to these areas and improve the overall building efficiency.

Communication among individual systems also helps automate some of the functions. For example, air conditioning can be turned on or off in a specific part of the building depending on the occupancy level in that part of the building. This is based on the communication between the air conditioning system and the access control system.

Another example is that when the building’s energy consumption reaches a maximum set-point, non-essential functions can be turned off based on a pre-determined order.

The smart building technology uses IoT components such as sensors placed all over the building. These sensors can continuously collect data about empty areas or data about changes in temperature and lighting conditions. This data is fed to software which can control different building systems smartly by using the data.

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Some of the smart building technologies currently available are:

  • KMC Controls provides complete IoT based building automation solutions using smart sensors to collect data, controllers to automate the building controls, cloud to store and process data and management applications to view real-time data and analytics.

  • The Comfy app connects to the HVAC and lighting systems in the office building, to let individual employees select their preferences. Employees can request to heat or cool their space from the app. They can also see the current temperature and the preferences of their neighbors. The building manager can see the overall preferences and usage patterns in the building in real-time as well as trends over time. Employees can also view conference room availability and set lighting requirements for meetings. The app can also learn based on the patterns of user requests.

Every company wants to save on electricity bills while still providing a comfortable environment for their employees. IoT technology makes it possible to have smart buildings that can regulate energy use and also provide a comfortable and safe environment for the occupants.

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Let us know what you think about IoT enabled Smart Building technologies, in the comment section below.

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Featured Image credit: cegoh/Pixabay

References:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/smart-buildings/smart-building-scenarios/overview.html

https://www.kmccontrols.com/

https://www.comfyapp.com/product/

Nikita Govil
Nikita Govil is an IT professional. She is passionate about writing and a perpetual learner with particular interest in latest technology innovations.