The case for a systematic development of Building Automation Systems

It is widely acknowledged that Automated Demand Response (ADR) is a key factor for the success of the Smart Grid. However, for ADR to be realized to its full extent a new generation of Building Automation Systems (BASs) will have to be developed and the existing upgraded to leverage dynamic tariff plans and curtailment calls sent from the grid. It is well known that developing BASs is an involved matter, mostly because application software is costly to develop and maintain. In practice, this state of affairs is slowing the rise of innovative solutions for ADR. In recent years, software engineering practices such as Model-Driven Engineering have been proposed as a means to alleviate the problem of developing BASs, which we believe should be presented to the Smart Grid community. This article presents the main challenges of creating software for BASs (from a modelling perspective), overviews the state-of-the-art and presents an outlook on possible model-driven engineering techniques that can be effectively applied to significantly improve the development of BASs in the near future.