Project EnMA – Automation-Supported Energy Management at Universities

What is it about?

Many non-university universities of applied sciences in Baden-Württemberg lack a consistent structure in terms of energy and facility management. They have grown historically and feature a wide variety of different technologies regarding metering structures, automation components and communication interfaces. In many cases, meters are still read and recorded manually, which leads to increased personnel effort and is prone to errors.

Furthermore, many properties face the problem that automatically read meters are stored in proprietary databases, binding the data to a specific software vendor and hindering vendor-independent further processing of energy data.

In a scientific accompanying project at the Universities of Biberach and Offenburg (EnMA Phase 1), a concept for automation-supported energy and facility management with standardized metering structures and systematic energy data management was developed.

Which systems were used?

A central objective of the project is to use a standardized and automated archiving of measurement data in a vendor-independent database according to a standardized data structure with reference to the labeling system of guideline VDI 3814, sheet 4.1.

Symcon serves as the central node connecting the field level with the SQL database. For this purpose, a publicly accessible SQL module was developed during the pilot phase and successfully applied in practice.

For visualization, the WebFront is used directly on one hand, and an energy management software on the other, which automatically imports data from the universities' databases via a VPN connection.

How is Symcon used?

To remain vendor-independent at the field level, standardized bus systems were used. M-Bus and Modbus TCP were primarily employed. Due to the integration of existing systems at the universities, the BACnet protocol was also used in several cases.

Conclusion

The great flexibility and innovative capability of Symcon, combined with the coherent standardized concept of EnMA, have led to a high acceptance rate in practice. Significant savings through active energy management using the visualized data have already been demonstrated.

The current roll-out phase with 14 additional universities shows that practical suitability is also given on a larger scale.