AutomatedBuildings.com Article - Out-of-the-Box Energy Monitoring

Have you noticed that you can’t pick up a trade magazine without reading about “green products?” We have. Quality Automation Graphics, a provider of control systems graphic design for the building automation industry, is assisting building controls companies, building owners, and others convey their green message through the use of off the shelve software, 3D interactive graphics, and interactive touch screen kiosks that display building energy efficiency data to the public.

Displaying energy efficiency on an interactive display helps a building owner to earn credit towards the U.S. Green Building Council’s Innovation in Design Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) system, which recognizes companies for innovative strategies that demonstrate quantifiable environmental benefits.

Many of our customers come to us because of our core competencies within the building controls market. Professionals designing 3D photorealistic graphics for the building controls industry, systems integrator for major automation company, value added reseller for large format touch screen technology, and kiosk GUI design, make up our solution. These divisions of our company have come together to offer a turnkey solution to help design and display LEED data. In 2007 we shipped 47 large format touch screens and kiosks, specifically designated for energy monitoring display.

One of our largest customers is purchasing from us, a USA made integrated LCD. This LCD is a fully contained LCD, with state of the art touch screen technology, and an energy efficient CPU. This provides the best possible solution on the market for the customer to display energy efficiencies about LEED certified solutions.

Providing the connectivity into internal building control systems using off the shelve software, and 3D photo realistic graphics to display to the public, allows end users a cost effective way to display information. The data displayed can help a building owner answer questions such as why the building owner used green building products, and how it is benefiting the environment by conserving energy. This technology allows the public to easily interact with historical and live building data and access information quickly and easily using touch screens. We offer several options for these solutions, always keeping in mind your needs and your budget. How do we do it? Keep reading.

How We Use OFF-The-Shelve Software Solutions for Energy Monitoring and Reporting

Integrating into existing building control systems is now easier than ever with the increased popularity of standard communication protocols such as BACnet, LONWorks, and OPC. Customers can now visualize their energy management systems and automatically generate canned and custom reports without any programming knowledge. The interoperability of these protocols eliminates the need to develop proprietary software and use companies the sell services as a application service provider (ASP). Under this model all changes and content management are controlled and billed by the ASP. Our model allows the end user freedom to use in house resources or a large network of international systems integrators certified on the software.

Having a standard for communication between devices has enabled software companies to design applications that can talk directly to these building control systems. This has provided us the ability to quickly and effectively design monitoring and reporting systems as it relates to building management with off the shelve software solutions.

Monitoring interfaces, displaying real-time or historical data from the building control system, can be viewed via a web browser from any location. All graphics are centrally located and the symbols used for the development of those screens are provided as part of the solution. This puts our end users in control of change management making changes to the system a breeze. In addition, established training and support is available with every installation, enabling efficient management of the monitoring system. Our goal with our customers to provide a solution that is easy to manage internally that provides a healthy ROI.

Reporting services are also available through a standard web browser and can be set to automatically run periodically or run on demand with user input parameters. All report templates are developed in Microsoft Excel® and can be configured to gather information from databases, web services, real-time or historical data. Developing standardized energy reports using a familiar product such as Microsoft Excel®, and the advanced data mapping features of the product, enables our customers to quickly make template configuration changes on the fly.

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Many of our competitors selling homemade software solutions want to control all aspects of the solution making costs 50% higher in most cases. Additionally they have to support and update the software as technology changes. Our solution uses an internationally recognized software automation developer with a large support network and development staff. We are a certified solution provider for this organization.

ABOUT QUALITY AUTOMATION GRAPHICS
An industry leader in control systems graphic design for the building automation industry, Quality Automation Graphics has eight years of experience providing control graphic solutions. The company’s core competencies are graphic design services for the controls industry, focusing on: graphic design outsourcing services, 2D and 3D (for most building control software), 3D symbol library creation, interactive GUI design, graphic design standards development, and energy monitoring reporting. For more information, contact Dan McCarty, 515-965-3403, www.qagraphics.com

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