FOCUS SUSTAINABILITY
CONVERSION
STRATEGY
Andy Sparrow, Head of Energy and Sustainability at Platinum Facilities explains the energy and
cost saving benefi ts of turning your building BMS into a BEMS
Converting your Building Management
System (BMS) into a Building Energy
Management System (BEMS) is very
cheap to do and can provide massive
energy savings, combined with very good
paybacks. Working through the various
control functions systematically, ensures
that energy use is optimised, and the
maximum savings realised.
TIME CONTROL
This ensures that plant only operates when
it is needed. A seven-day programme allows
56 MAY 2022
individual days to be programmed, as
weekends may be di erent to weekdays,
and allows Bank Holidays to be taken into
account.
An air conditioning system needs to
switch on an hour or two before people
arrive, to get the building up to its normal
occupancy temperature. This is known as
the warm-up period and its length depends
on the outside temperature. An optimum
start control system monitors the outside
temperature and ensures that the warm-up
period is the minimum length of time, which
minimises energy wastage. Similarly, the
system can switch o plant before the end of
the occupancy period, so that the building
can run on residual heat le within the
heating system, thereby reducing run times.
‘ON-DEMAND’ HEATING AND COOLING
Plant should only operate when required.
On-demand control ensures that heating
and cooling only operates when an area
calls for it. If the whole building is at or
above the set point temperature, then the
heating will not be operational. Similarly,
the cooling will not operate when the