Schneider Electric implements an intelligent building management system for the Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle épinière – ICM

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Rueil-Malmaison (France), September 24, 2010 – Schneider Electric has implemented an intelligent building management system for the Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle épinière (ICM), a world centre for research, inaugurated today in Paris.

The ICM, which carries out both fundamental and clinical research, aspires to a better understanding of brain and spinal cord diseases and to rapidly develop effective treatments through research. The building, which is located at the heart of the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital Group, was designed to facilitate a new, collaborative vision of research over 22,000 m² of laboratories which bring together 600 researchers from around the world.

“Schneider Electric has implemented technologies which will provide the ICM and its occupants with comfort, energy efficiency, flexibility and a promising development,” said Frédéric Abbal, President of Schneider Electric France. “We have delivered efficient solutions to meet the requirements dictated by the nature of the ICM’s research activities. And by providing a “21 CFR part 11” compliant monitoring post, the Group has once again demonstrated its understanding of the particular needs of its health industry clients."

Schneider Electric has provided integrated technical solutions and services to achieve the highest levels of energy efficiency: Building Management System (BMS), metering system, live monitoring, etc. The systems will also ensure occupants remain comfortable: timer controls; lighting, heating and air-conditioning management systems, etc.

The BMS architecture is based on open protocols to control all functions: lighting, chilled beams, communication with electricity production, heating, and cooling systems, etc. The building has been fitted with a total of almost 5,800 control points, 4,600 of which are for heating or air conditioning equipment, and 1,200 for electrical distribution. The Group has provided specific control points for the ICM laboratories: temperature, fume cupboard¹ processes.

Using real-time energy consumption management and monitoring software, Schneider Electric has provided an innovative and simple intelligent energy management system.  Energy consumption levels will be available to all occupants in real time, displayed on two screens in the cafeteria and the ICM offices waiting room, via an energy consumption control panel.

¹A device for extracting toxic fumes emanating from products used in the laboratories (similar to an extractor hood)

About Schneider Electric
As a global specialist in energy management with operations in more than 100 countries, Schneider Electric offers integrated solutions across multiple market segments, including leadership positions in energy and infrastructure, industrial processes, building automation, and data centres/networks, as well as a broad presence in residential applications. Focused on making energy safe, reliable, and efficient, the company's 100,000 plus employees achieved sales of more than 15.8 billion euros in 2009, through an active commitment to help individuals and organisations “Make the most of their energy”.

www.schneider-electric.com
www.icm-institute.org

 

Autodesk’s Ambition to Change the Green Building Industry

Source: Reuters

By Justin Moresco - Earth2Tech

When software is designed well, it can radically improve the way an industry works. That’s the vision behind ongoing efforts at Autodesk to upgrade its building performance modeling software — to make energy retrofits of buildings cheaper and easier.

The San Rafael, Calif.-based firm believes the improvements it’s making to its suite of construction industry software will compress the time it takes to do detailed sustainability analysis (energy, water, emissions) from weeks to days and as a result, make such analysis cheap enough to be accessible to a majority of the building market.

More than 100 million buildings in the U.S. are leaky and inefficient and could use an energy makeover with measures like better insulation, heating and air conditioning systems and natural ventilation. But most of these structures are relatively small (homes and offices), and the cost of building accurate computer models to do detailed analysis on them is often too high with current technology, according to John Kennedy, senior manager for sustainable analysis products at Autodesk. He says energy service companies (ESCOs) -– businesses that develop, install and finance energy efficiency projects –- today won’t touch a building less than 10,000 square feet.

But Autodesk believes the economics will dramatically change once engineers and architects can build a model in, say, a day or two and have it automatically spit out recommendations with the impact on cost and performance for each measure. Some of the new or improved features Autodesk is working on include: an increased use of cloud computing that would make sophisticated analysis quicker, more leverage of deep reservoirs of data about local weather conditions and the performance of different building products, more accurate and faster modeling of natural ventilation and water use, and an emphasis on making sure all of this “sustainability criteria” can be easily and accurately shared between the different software used by architects and engineers. Kennedy didn’t provide a timeline for these upgrades.

Autodesk also wants to incorporate the embodied energy of building materials (the total energy used in manufacturing, transporting and installing) more thoroughly into its software models. “It makes no sense to put triple-paned windows in a house in Los Angeles when the energy saved from its use would never exceed the amount needed to build it,” Kennedy said. Few vendors currently supply or even have this data to provide, he added.

Still, even with Autodesk’s planned improvements, it’s unclear how far down into the building market its software can penetrate. At some point, it will always be cheaper for boutique energy retrofitters focused on the residential market to analyze a home than an architectural or engineering firm charging $150 an hour.

Autodesk says that current versions of its software –- such as performance modeler Ecotect Analysis and its on-demand Green Building Studio –- has already shrunk the time it takes for sustainability analysis from months to weeks, and the firm can also boast of a growing customer base. But the use of building performance software, from Autodesk or anyone else, is still relatively uncommon among design firms.

Part of the reason for this slow adoption is the perceived high cost of using these tools. Another reason, however, is that the industry –- broadly speaking -– is still operating collectively as if energy and water use don’t need to be factored in during design. It’s what Dawn Danby, sustainable design program manager at Auodesk, calls a “cultural” problem. While stricter building codes and the growing prominence of green building standards like LEED are pushing the embrace of performance software, widespread adoption won’t happen until architects and engineers change their habits.

That helps to explain Autodesk’s mounting marketing push alongside its software development. As part of that effort, in July the firm announced its “Clean Tech Partner Program” through which it will give away software packages worth up to $150,000 each to 100 early-stage cleantech startups. According to Danby, the firm is working hard to inform designers and building owners that its software is relatively easy to use, inexpensive and gives quick feedback.

Still, changing the construction industry will be a long slog, even when one of the strongest pushes is coming from a fast-moving software company.