Control and Monitoring System Communications for Effective Energy Use

The application of integrated, distributed systems techniques to energy management, while offering substantial benefits in terms of improved effectiveness of energy use, is too expensive for small commercial and residential buildings, because of the high cost of custom installation. This paper presents ways in which the use of standatdization and commonality of hardware and software can reduce costs. Layers of commonality are identified which, if adopted, would permit automatic interfacing of mechanical, electrical, topological, logical, software and human elements of "off-the-shelf" energy management components. A serial multi-drop data link, COMONET, is described which is specifically developed for control and monitoring tasks within buildings.