Schneider Electric has announced Building Insights, a cloud-based solution that provides enterprise small buildings real-time visibility and control of all heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), lighting and metering devices from anywhere at any time. With the Building Insights solution, enterprises with multi-site portfolios of small buildings – such as restaurants, retail stores, healthcare offices and banks – will be able to efficiently manage thousands of sites simultaneously via a computer, tablet or smartphone. Armed with actionable information, building owners and managers can make smarter energy management decisions to achieve up to a 30 percent reduction in energy costs while optimizing operations, increasing energy efficiency, reducing risks and improving occupant comfort.
The solution will offer facility managers two levels of control: site-level and cloud-level. At the site-level, the Building Insights solution supports both wired and wireless devices for HVAC, lighting and metering applications, providing fully integrated control of energy on-site and remotely. With the solution's foundation in the cloud, facility managers can monitor and manage their facilities through powerful cloud-based software that offers a custom dashboard. This dashboard will incorporate advanced data and analytics to provide actionable insight and can be used to configure devices, add lighting schemes, create automated schedules and respond to trends, alerts and issues. In addition, the dashboard also can provide tailored reports – for example, monitoring specific HVAC sensors and/or delivering trend analysis of overall monthly consumption to allow for continuous improvement.
With remote, centralized management of building devices, building managers are empowered to elevate performance and improve operations. The Building Insights solution will offer:
- Actionable insights: Advanced data and analytics communicate the information building managers need to maximize energy and operational efficiency, performance and return on investment.
- On-site controllers that can integrate Modbus, EnOcean and Zigbee metering and pulse-counting devices to pinpoint problem areas and discover opportunities for savings.
- Easy monitoring and control of both basic and advanced lighting systems – either wired or wireless – with integration of switches, relays, motion, lighting and door/window contact sensors.
- Safe and secure Web access to sites and storage of user, project and site data.
Leveraging open protocols, the Building Insights solution from Schneider Electric can easily expand to meet growing building requirements, reducing downtime and labor and material costs. In addition, the solution's wireless technology makes it ideal for retrofit applications, as it requires virtually no downtime during installation.
The solution is currently available in North America. For more information, contact a Schneider Electric sales representative.
