SAN RAMON, CALIF.—This year’s ASHRAE expo in Las Vegas, January 31 to February 2, includes more than a dozen EnOcean Alliance members showcasing the latest energy harvesting, wireless solutions for HVAC applications. EnOcean Alliance, located at booth N5042, is a consortium of 170 companies primarily serving the building sector. They will be hosting solutions developed by Verve Living Systems, Leviton, Echoflex, Illumra, Kieback & Peter, EnOcean and Titus. Several other EnOcean Alliance members will be displaying their products at the exposition, including: Distech Controls, Can2Go, Functional Devices, LonMark International, BACnet International, Reliable Controls and Spartan Peripheral Devices.
For many years, traditional wired bus systems for building automation, like BACnet or LonMark, for example, have been the norm. Recently, however, wireless systems have been growing in popularity since the arrival of energy harvesting, battery-less components, like those now incorporated into roughly 700 interoperable products from EnOcean Alliance member companies.
Wireless, battery-less and thus maintenance free devices, offer considerable advantages; including improved flexibility, enhanced occupant comfort, reduced energy consumption and are particularly vital with respect to retrofits. Furthermore, products from EnOcean Alliance members are open and interoperable, meaning they seamlessly integrate with any existing building system, and with each other. These advantages allow better installation possibilities for both residential and commercial applications. It also fosters convenience, accessibility and timely changes made as needed. The addition of wireless technology ultimately results in a complete solution.
Interoperability among the products developed by members of the EnOcean Alliance is driven by EnOcean Equipment Profiles (EEP). This EnOcean Alliance standard, which enables the interoperability of equipment manufactured by different vendors, was defined to bind devices and data communication, but was restricted to unidirectional sensor communication. The EEP Standard 2.1, ratified in January of 2011, includes new profiles, including bidirectional energy harvesting-based communication. This new specification is simply meant as an enhancement to the original EnOcean Alliance standard released in 2009, ensuring 100 percent compatibility.
The EEP Standard 2.1 can be downloaded here:
http://www.enocean-alliance.org/en/enocean_standard/.
Go to EnOcean.
