Well, maybe not all on it’s own, but OPC can do its part.  Seems everywhere you look these days people are talking about climate change, using less resources and saving energy.  Here in Canada, the Kyoto hot potato is in the news again.  The latest entry on YourEneryForum.com mentions that the State of the Union address touched on energy efficiency, but goes on to talk more about saving energy in the Home and Building applications.  There was an interesting excerpt from the posting:

According to the American Institute of Architects, “Buildings account for forty-eight percent of U.S. energy consumption and generate far more greenhouse gas emissions than any other sector.”  From schools and office buildings to big-box retailers and factories, all those structures use energy. 

It got me thinking about system monitoring and process optimization.  For years, the industrial automation world have been using OPC to monitor assets and feed data to optimization applications, provide historical analysis, and advanced calculation packages in order to save energy and improve operational efficiency.  OPC can provide the same functionality for building automation systems.  The home and building control industry has several wire level protocols, and there are OPC servers available for many of the popular ones, such as Lonworks, BACNet, and Johnson Controls.

With all this focus on energy efficiency and security, it seems inevitable that the successful OPC solutions from the industrial automation world will be applied more and more to the building automation world.  See, OPC can help save the planet.