Building Automation System

The Western Michigan University building automation system is a programmed intelligent control system that regulates the mechanical systems in a building, such as environmental control systems, chillers, boilers and temperature. The first components of this building automation system network were installed in 1988. The system keeps the building's climate within a specific range and collects data for documentation of performance. The intent is to create an intelligent building to reduce energy and maintenance costs. 

When any part of the system malfunctions, it signals an alarm, which is visible on the building automation system's graphic interface. Components include two enterprise servers and more than 100 supervisory network controllers, over 1,800 field devices and 2,500 VAV controllers. The supervisory network controllers include the TAC Niagara Framework UNC, Barber Colman GCM and Trane Summit BCU.

The building automation system uses LonWorks to communicate with devices from TAC, Trane, Distech, Danfoss, ABB, DirSteem, Lakewood, Ebtron and Onan. It uses BACnet to communicate with TAC, Trane, York, Phoenix, Liebert, Semco, Cypress Enviosystems and Ebtron. It uses Modbus to communicate with TAC, Rockwell Automation, Campbell Scientific and Armstrong. There are proprietary communications used by many of these products as well. The building automation system has over 90,000 real and virtual points in at least 76 buildings on two separate campuses, and all data can be shared across the entire network. The graphical interface is all web-based.