The demands placed on the intelligence of a building have risen steadily in recent years, with energy efficiency, user comfort and a good return on investment taking center stage. With building automation across all trades, as offered by beckhoff with PC-based control, sustainable, energy-efficient construction and living can be realized in the sense of a "green building. All trades, from HVAC to lighting and facade control, room automation, AV and media technology to cloud connectivity, are integrated on one platform. All those involved in the building automation value chain benefit from this: architects enjoy maximum design freedom with optimum functional efficiency; specialist planners receive increased planning reliability with reduced complexity; system integrators benefit from simplified engineering and increased process reliability; operators minimize their operating costs and maintenance effort; investors receive the greatest possible investment protection.
At a glance: your advantages in building automation with PC-based control
- One control system for all trades
- Exploiting energy-saving potential
- Scalable and modular automation components
- Support of common communication standards
PC-based control combines all data points in one system and thus generates synergy effects
Heating, ventilation, air conditioning
The twincat 3 building automation TF8040 software library provides a comprehensive package of function modules for building automation that cover the entire range of HVAC control functions. This significantly simplifies the work of the system integrator in the implementation of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning technology. Functions such as summer night cooling, summer compensation, backup operation, time schedules and much more are also available as ready-to-use software modules. With the help of the HVAC modules, further energy-saving opportunities can be exploited through the presence-dependent control of trades and facilities.
Room automation
lighting, sun protection, window control, heating, ventilation and air conditioning are linked together in the room automation system for intelligent control of all building services. This not only reduces the number of individual physical data points and thus the error rate, but also reduces energy consumption. The sun protection functions thermoautomatic and the light solution for daylight-dependent lighting control contribute significantly to energy saving. Due to the high accuracy of the fast control, sun protection systems for light control can be wonderfully controlled. Classic room control units can also be easily integrated via KNX/EIB, modbus and enocean.
media technology
by supporting common media and building technology protocols and interfaces, the beckhoff automation platform is able to address all industry-typical devices and systems. In addition, the integration of AV and media technology and building automation opens up new possibilities, for example for the simple control and operation of multimedia devices in meeting and conference rooms. But also the monitoring of AV equipment states can be done via the same system.
Operate and observe
depending on the type of building or. -function vary customer specific requirements in terms of remote control and maintenance, energy and consumption data logging, compressed air monitoring and timing. twincat HMI software is perfect for visualizing all building control and monitoring data. Visualization can take place on a local panel PC or a control panel connected to an industrial PC or embedded controller. But also any HTML5-enabled browser, as found in smartphones and tablets, can be used to open the twincat HMI visualization. With the help of twincat iot software functions, buildings can be connected to clouds of public or private cloud service providers. twincat iot functions support communication protocols such as MQTT, AMQP or OPC UA for easy and secure communication with cloud services. the twincat iot data agent can be used to easily configure beckhoff controllers with cloud services. The twincat iot data agent does not require any programming, but with a simple "drag’n drop" tool the connection between selected control variables and the cloud can be established. By supporting OPC UA, the twincat data agent can also be used to configure 3rd-party devices for the cloud. With the help of twincat iot functions ( TF6710 ), all data points and measured values can be connected to the cloud quickly and easily; twincat analytics enables the generation of a dashboard with just one click.
Building automation system (GA), technical building management (TGM)
Beckhoff building automation supports all energy efficiency classes
the european standard EN 15232 describes the impact of building automation and building management on energy efficiency and allows a standardized presentation. It includes a structured list of all building automation functions and their impact on energy efficiency. EN 15232 also provides methodical support in defining minimum requirements for building automation systems. Basically, the higher the level of automation, the higher the energy savings. With a PC-based control solution from beckhoff and the optimized functions in the twincat 3 building automation software library, it is even possible to achieve energy efficiency class A of DIN EN 15232. Green building concepts can be realized; operators benefit from the "ISO 50001-ready" status and can be exempted from the energy levy by recording all energy consumption.
Bus Terminals: the modular I/O system
maximum scalability: the beckhoff control platform
Beckhoff offers the right control solution for every application in building automation
With a comprehensive modular system of modular and scalable software and hardware components, Beckhoff makes it possible to configure a precisely tailored control solution – in terms of performance, costs and available installation space – for every task in building automation. From the powerful industrial PCs for the management and operating level, the embedded PCs for the automation level to the Bus Terminal controllers for room automation, users benefit from the maximum scalable controller performance: from the 16-bit CPU to the x86 CPU with 2.1 ghz on 12 cores.
Our bus terminal system supports with 1.000 different I/O terminals all common sensors and actuators as well as the fieldbus systems typically used in building automation. The fine granularity of the system makes it possible to plug in only as many inputs or outputs as required by the project at hand. The extremely high packing density (12 mm for 16 digital I/Os) reduces the space requirement to a minimum and facilitates later retrofitting. The bus terminal system is a worldwide automation standard and is used in numerous applications. This ensures high availability as well as secure investment protection.
A wide range of interfaces enables the system integration of all technical building services.
Beckhoff supports open communication to the field level
The powerful PC-based automation platform handles control, data processing, connectivity, visualization, remote maintenance and cloud connection. The open interfaces in software and hardware make it ideal for centralized or decentralized control of all trades: from heating, ventilation and air-conditioning control to room automation, media control, operation and monitoring. Control can take place locally or in the cloud.
In addition to integrating the standardized communication protocols for building automation, the system integrator also has access to the most common interfaces for connecting audio/video and multimedia systems. The twincat database server ( TF6420 ) can be integrated into the project planning to connect the building automation with common databases. In conjunction with the twincat iot functions ( TF6710 ), data storage and monitoring can also be realized in the cloud.