My last post on Green IT spurred some off-line conversations with folks.  Once you get talking about OPC and Green IT, being able to access the IT assets in a standardized way is really only half the story.   Real savings come from also being able to access and control the building management systems.  The concept of integration is expanding to encompass the management of energy demand in the building, energy supply to it, and control of the entire process.  By knowing how the heat generation of the machines affects the building temperature lets higher level applications optimize the cooling equipment.  The key requirement is access to data from the energy management system and control of equipment.  OPC has that covered too with OPC Servers available for a wide variety of building management protocols like Modbus, BACNet, LonWorks, Johnson Controls and others.

One of the problems people face when trying to create an Energy Management and Control System (EMCS) is integrating building systems into the network.  The Building Management Systems (BMS) have all the tools and applications for dealing with building networks.  IT has access to very powerful Network Management Systems (NMS) and SNMP connectivity to the various network assets.   OPC is an obvious way to bridge the gap.

Industries in the Automation world such as refining, chemical processing, manufacturing, utilities, etc already know the value of energy optimization in their process, particularly when dealing with heating and cooling systems.  They already use higher level optimization applications, calculation packages or analysis tools to take monitored data and take the appropriate actions in the control system.   Using OPC, the BMS and IT applications can easily leverage similar systems.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone out there with EMCS systems.  Do you make use of OPC today?  Are your BMS and/or IT systems part of the equation?  Why or Why not?