Interview Questions.

Q1. What Are The Largest Consumers Of Energy In Most Buildings, And How Can I Reduce This Demand?

Energy call for in homes relies upon largely on the weather where it's miles placed. Lighting normally consumes 30-50 percentage of electrical call for. Heating and air conditioning varies by means of place, but can eat 20-40 percentage of strength (fuel, electric, and oil). Office gadget commonly consumes 25 percentage of the electrical bill. Demand may be reduced with the aid of scheduled off or setback intervals, top call for monitoring and load shedding, the usage of drives and with the aid of making use of loads of manage techniques which might be specific to the device being controlled.

Q2. How Can I Contact Schneider Electric To Learn More About Saving Energy In Hospital Facilities?

Schneider Electric has more than one hundred workplaces and partners for the duration of the U.S. To carrier any vicinity of the united states of america.

Q3. How Much Money Does Building Automation Cost?

As with pretty much another product, the price of constructing automation can range wildly. The fact is that the price all boils all the way down to the form of gadget you pick and the functions you need the device to be capable of carrying out. With that stated, in new production, constructing automation commonly works out to be among 1% and a couple of% of the general cost of the mission.

Q4. What Is Building Automation?

Building automation maximum broadly refers to growing centralized, networked structures of hardware and software program video display units and controls a constructing’s facility systems (electricity, lights, plumbing, HVAC, water supply, and many others.)

When facilities are monitored and controlled in a seamless style, this creates a much greater reliable operating surroundings for the building’s tenants. Furthermore, the performance brought thru automation permits the building’s facility management team to adopt extra sustainable practices and decrease power prices.

These are the 4 center functions of a constructing automation machine:

To manipulate the building surroundings

To operate structures in keeping with occupancy and energy demand

To monitor and accurate device performance

To alert or sound alarms when wished

At finest performance stages, an automatic building is greener and extra user-friendly than a non-controlled constructing.

Q5. What Products Or Programs Does Schneider Electric Offer To Help Me With Energy Efficiency?

Schneider Electric gives several manipulate product families and plenty of sorts of controllers for in reality any building manipulate need. The local Schneider Electric workplace or associate assesses the constructing’s power profile, price range, and necessities to determine the nice products or services required to fulfill the customer’s desires. Energy carrier programs together with Schneider Electric’s EnergyStep can assist customers check what kind of strength conservation measures are essential for each instantaneous and sustained financial savings.

Q6. Who Is Schneider Electric?

As a global specialist in energy management with operations in more than one hundred countries, Schneider Electric gives integrated answers across multiple marketplace segments, consisting of management positions in power and infrastructure, commercial processes, constructing automation, and records centers/networks, in addition to a broad presence in residential programs. Schneider Electric has a department dedicated to serving the healthcare market.

Q7. How Do Building Automation Systems Work?

Basic BAS have five critical components:

Sensors — Devices that degree values such as CO2 output, temperature, humidity, sunlight hours or even room occupancy.

Controllers — These are the brains of the structures. Controllers take records from the creditors and decide how the gadget will respond.

Output gadgets — These carry out the commands from the controller. Example devices are relays and actuators.

Communications protocols — Think of these because the language spoken a few of the components of the BAS. A popular example of a communications protocol is BACnet.

Dashboard or person interface — These are the displays or interfaces hum use to engage with the BAS. The dashboard is wherein constructing information are stated.

Most of the activity inside a BAS takes place out of sight from a constructing’s occupants. The collectors are discreet, and the controllers and output devices are hidden from view, simply as wiring and plumbing are.

Q8. What Makes Octant Innovations Unique?

Unlike our competition, Octant Innovations’ building automation systems are factory engineered. This me that by the time your constructing automation system reaches you, you can relaxation assured that it's been manipulate configured and examined in our factory to make certain ease of use and device efficiency. Also, we've ensured that our services and products are priced competitively, without reducing the nice of product or fine of carrier our clients get hold of.

Q9. The Evolution Of Smart Buildings?

Kevin Callahan, writing for Automation.Com, points to the introduction of the incubator thermostat — to preserve chook eggs heat and permit them to hatch — as the beginning of smart homes.

Like most technology, constructing automation has superior just within our lifetimes at a charge that would have baffled facility managers and engineers in, say, the Nineteen Fifties. Back then, automatic homes depended on pneumatic controls in which compressed air become the medium of change for the video display units and controllers in the machine.

By the 1980s, microprocessors had become small enough and sufficiently inexpensive that they could be implemented in constructing automation systems. Moving from compressed air to analog controls to digital controls became not anything short of a revolution. A decade later, open protocols were delivered that allowed the controlled facilities to clearly speak with each other. By the flip of the millennium, wireless era allowed additives to talk with out cable attachments.

Terms to Understand

At first, the phrases building automation experts use appear like a big recreation of alphabet soup. There are acronyms everywhere. And as Lynxspring’s VP of Marketing, Marc Petock, mentioned on LinkedIn, some human beings deal with many of these terms as interchangeable. Let’s make clear this issue now:

Building Management System (BMS) and Building Control System (BCS) — These are extra fashionable terms for structures that manipulate a constructing’s facilities, although they're not necessarily automation systems.

Building Automation System (BAS) — A BAS is a subset of the management and control structures above and can be a part of the larger BMS or BCS. That stated, building control and constructing automation have so thoroughly overlapped in recent years that it’s comprehensible humans could use the ones terms interchangeably.

Energy Management System (EMS) and Energy Management Control System (EMCS) — These are systems that particularly deal with electricity consumption, metering, etc. There is sufficient overlap between what a BAS does and what an EMS does that we can recall these synonymous.

Direct Digital Control (DDC) — This is the innovation that was introduced approximately by means of small, low-priced microprocessors in the ‘80s. DDC is the technique by way of which the components of a virtual system communicate.

Application Programming Interface (API) — This is a time period common in computer programing. It describes the code that defines how two or extra pieces of software talk with one another.

What makes the terminology specially complicated is that the technology evolves so quick that it’s difficult to recognise at what point a new term needs to be implemented. Then, you also have experts in special international locations using unique terms but still having to talk with each other. Just be organized for the terminology to be in a country of flux.

Q10. How Do I Know That The Building Automation System Is Actually Reducing My Energy Demand?

Measurement is a key issue of any strength application in verifying that electricity conservation measures are turning inside the consequences that have been anticipated. The combination of metering and constructing automation device statistics logging takes measurements as often as important via the gadget community to provide strength use reports. These reports then allow earlier than/after contrast of energy call for. By aligning this information with the time energy conservation measures that have been installed location, the system verifies whether or not energy discount definitely came about and why.

Q11. Who Installs Building Automation?

In the home and in smaller packages, constructing automation may be set up with the aid of the give up patron. However, this isn’t the maximum not unusual manner it’s done. Instead, constructing owners usually paintings with a contractor for the set up of constructing automation systems.

Q12. How Can A Building Automation System Help Me?

A properly designed device successfully reduces power consumption 12 months after year. When a building automation machine is installed in a constructing or office park, it's miles programmed by way of Schneider Electric to very tightly manage each thing of the constructing that consumes electricity. These programs optimize the building to maximize the comfort of occupants whilst reducing power expenses (electric powered and fossil fuel). Ongoing adjustments and adjustments to the device continually refine strength conservation measures and record on any regions in which electricity use can be excessive.

Q13. What Level Of Security Is Built Into The Products That Are Approved For This Project?

Security is pinnacle of my thoughts lately, many of our BAS systems are sitting on a proverbial powder keg in Death Valley surrounded by way of chain smokers at some stage in the center of summer time. Ok, I may have a chunk of a flair for the dramatic but after I can spend 3 mins and discover an Airport with its BAS uncovered to the internet and the default login/password nonetheless in the system that might be some thing a end-consumer should be concerned approximately.

Q14. What Is The Return On Investment Involved In Building Automation?

Ultimately, the go back on funding you’ll comprehend is at once correlated to the energy and upkeep fees of the structures your constructing automation is designed to control.

Q15. Who Benefits From Building Automation?

Building automation is useful to each building owners and occupants. For constructing proprietors, automation allows to lessen the price of system protection as well as lessen power costs. For occupants, constructing automation allows to make the building more at ease. Through managed HVAC, ventilation, and more a comfy ecosystem is robotically created.

Q16. Why Are Building Automation Systems Useful?

The benefits of building automation are manifold, but the real motives facility managers adopt building automation structures break down into three extensive categories:

They save building owners money

They allow building occupants to experience more cozy and be greater productive

They lessen a building’s environmental impact

Saving Money

The place in which a BAS can store a constructing owner a widespread amount of cash is in application bills. A greater power-efficient constructing sincerely prices less to run.

An automated constructing can, for instance, examine and start to expect constructing and room occupancy, as confirmed in advance with the heated board room instance. If a constructing can recognise while the call for for lights or HVAC centers will wax and wane, then it can dial again output whilst call for is lower. Estimated electricity savings from sincerely tracking occupancy range from 10-30%, which can upload as much as lots of bucks stored on utilities each month.

Furthermore, a constructing can also sync up with the out of doors environment for max performance. This is most useful at some stage in the spring and summer time, whilst there is more daylight hours (and for this reason less demand for indoors lighting fixtures) and whilst it's far warmer outdoor, permitting the constructing to leverage natural air circulation for consolation.

Data collection and reporting additionally makes facility management extra cost green. In the occasion of a failure someplace in the machine, this could get stated right on the BAS dashboard, which means a facility professional doesn’t should spend time seeking out and looking to diagnose the hassle.

Finally, optimizing the operations of different building centers extends the lives of the actual gadget, meaning decreased replacement and renovation fees.

Typically, facility managers locate that the money a BAS saves them will over the years offset the set up and implementation of the device itself.

Comfort and Productivity

Smarter control over the constructing’s inner surroundings will hold occupants happier, thereby decreasing court cases and time spent resolving those court cases. Furthermore, research have shown that improved air flow and air exceptional have a direct effect on a enterprise’s bottom line: Employees take fewer ill days, and greater comfort permits personnel to focus on their paintings, permitting them to boom their person productivity.

“The cost blessings average $25.00/ square foot,” writes Minnesota’s Metropolitan Energy Policy Coalition. “With decreased unwell days trlated into a internet impact of about $5.00/rectangular foot and elevated in productivity trlated right into a internet effect of about $20.00/rectangular foot.”

Environmentally Friendly

The key to an automatic building’s reduced environmental effect is its energy performance. By lowering strength intake, a BAS can lessen the output of greenhouse gases and improve the constructing’s indoor air fine, the latter of which ties returned into backside-line issues approximately occupant productivity.

Q17. Does Octant Innovations Provide Maintenance Services For Building Automation?

Building automation structures normally preserve themselves; therefore, ordinary renovation isn’t required. However, Octant innovations does offer updates in addition to system improvements to their clients.

Q18. How Do I Know Whether My Building Is Good Or Bad Regarding Energy Efficiency?

Schneider Electric gives power services which could profile the power use at any building or set of buildings. These offerings include metering, auditing, faraway tracking, and methodical dimension of the complete constructing envelope and related systems. The consequences of this kind of service are an energy performance record, in all likelihood areas of improvement, and the payback that may be expected.

Q19. What Is A Building Automation System?

A BAS is a community of small, committed microcomputers designed to control various parts of a constructing, together with lighting fixtures, heating, air conditioning, elevators, blinds, boilers, chillers, f, and other components of the building infrastructure. A scalable and flexible building automation machine is the foundation of any power conservation application for a constructing.