Colombia. Having smart buildings is an imperative necessity in modern society. Controlling all kinds of subsystems in a building, increasing safety and saving energy, are missions that companies and service managers have. Schneider Electric, a leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation, has the Building and Energy Management Systems (BEMS) solution, formerly known as (BMS), which contributes to improving the operation of this type of infrastructure.
By implementing the BEMS, the operation of each of the subsystems that are part of a building is optimized, such as: air conditioning, heating, ventilation or lighting, among others. This is how the savings that can be obtained depend on the composition of each project, but at a general level, it is possible to achieve energy savings ranging from 30% to 70%.
The investment to implement a BEMS is very low, compared to the total cost of a construction, (Office buildings, business centers, hotels, hospitals, shopping centers, warehouses or airports, etc.), since the average is less than 1%, which allows returns on investment to be obtained from the first year and a half.
"It is noteworthy that Building and Energy Management Systems allow the monitoring and control of all the subsystems that make up a building: access control, CCTV (Closed Circuit Television Cameras), intrusion detection, fire detection and extinction, air conditioning, heating, ventilation, lighting, electrical system and elevator management, in an integrated way, where these subsystems exchange information with each other for automatic decision making, freeing the system operator from having to supervise or execute 'minor' actions and that allows him to focus on more critical processes that require special attention, increasing his productivity and making each of the processes involved in daily operation more efficient", stressed César Mauricio Montañés, Product Manager for Building Solutions at Schneider Electric.
Colombia moves towards efficiency
The expert stressed that in Colombia the personnel in charge of the management and administration of buildings are aware of the issue, if compared to other Latin American countries. "We are at a point where a BEMS has ceased to be an option within the budgets of the constructions to become a necessity. We see this reflected in the large number of shopping centers, offices, hotels, hospitals, airports and business centers, with this solution implemented," he said.
To this, he added that it is not common to find in Colombia any new project that does not have planned in its design to have a BEMS.
Colombia is having great potential in the development and installation of the systems, because they are a tool for the people in charge of the management of the building. This allows them to see through a graphic interface in a 2D or 3D plane each of the areas or floors, easily identifying temperature conditions, lighting, alerts or alarms of a smoke sensor that was activated or a presence sensor that detected an intruder in a restricted area, automatically showing the operator the nearest camera.
It also provides the option to report to the operator real-time failures of luminaires and their exact location, reducing response times and improving maintenance schedules according to the number of hours it has been on versus its useful life.
Another benefit is the storage of data and the generation of reports in an automatic and pre-programmed way on energy consumption by subsystem or by area, making comparisons on consumption with the previous month or year, entry and exit times of collaborators and validated and rejected access in restricted areas.
To finish César Mauricio Montañés stressed that the installation and programming times are directly related to the size of each project, the progress of the civil works, etc., but from the moment you start with the installation of equipment (hardware) until the moment you finish the configuration and programming of the system (software), the process can take approximately two to six months.
From the start-up of the BEMS, that is, when the installation, configuration and programming stage has been completed, energy savings begin to be obtained, which are increasingly optimized within the next stage called "system tuning", where adjustments are made in the programming until reaching the optimal point where the maximum possible savings are stabilized.
It is noteworthy that Schneider Electric's Building and Energy Management Systems were listed for two consecutive years (2015-2016) by Navigant Research, an expert in high-profile research reports from industries, as the number one in the world, thanks to strong leadership in the integration of platforms that allow the proper management of buildings.
