The knowledge problem of building systems and energy markets

Energy blogger and economist Lynne Kiesling writes at the site “Knowledge Problem”, presumably a reference to Hayek’s observation that individuals are filled with limited and mostly erroneous knowledge. This knowledge problem makes it impossible for centrally planned economies, or for anything other than markets, to collect or filter the knowledge necessary to answer questions of production and distribution.

Markets for autonomous building systems, and therefore energy markets, suffer from another kind of knowledge problem, one that damages the market and prevents its development. In this market, the gap between what we know building systems can do, and what owners and operators are aware that they can ask for is immense. Their intermediaries, the sales forces of non-innovative systems, seem bound to keeping them uninformed, to support account control. In the middle stand the public utilities commissions (PUCs), effectively willful in their populist Luddism. The architects and building engineers seem as little informed as their customers, or perhaps merely uninterested in spending and time in this low margin, low bid portion of their projects.

These are strong words, and strong accusations, but they were bolstered by my recent time at FIATECH. At FIATECH, those companies with the most intense process oriented facilities work with the best engineers and the best construction companies to address inefficiencies caused by lost information in capital projects. In this forum, the engineers who design the largest chemical plants meet with sophisticated owner / operators of those same plants. And yet, even here, a strong dichotomy of knowledge was obvious.

The best engineers, and the owners of the best construction companies did not blink an eye when I talked of autonomous agent-based systems, each defending their system-based mission, and responding to economic choreography from the business enterprise. They readily acknowledged as almost too obvious to speak of that immense improvements in efficiency heightened amenities were readily available for the taking. They were well aware that 60% of the energy flowing over the power grid was supplying operations that could see their energy use cut in half almost overnight.

This group thought, though, that markets based upon economic responsiveness would never develop. The PUCs would never act in any way that would reduce their own power. The power companies would continue to market just enough “green campaigns” to keep the unsophisticated non-technical populace happy—and not disturb their iron grip on existing franchises. Building owners will never demand performance and interactivity and so there is no use developing it.

Building owners and operators have opposing prejudices. They can readily imagine participating in energy markets. They readily leap to tell me the services they would like to be able to get from their buildings. They are eager to get some transparent access to high-level information on building maintenance and operations to control costs and be able to audit their own operations.

Building owners, however, are sure that the technology is not developed. They report that their suppliers are unwilling or unable to provide these services. I have often been told that we don’t know how to do this yet. Last fall, at a charrette on intelligent buildings, it was the consensus of the consulting engineers in the room that we did not know enough to make building systems autonomous and responsive.

So there we have a different knowledge problem. The most technically sophisticated, with deepest knowledge of the current state of the art know that although the technology is already available, that pure politics would never allow the market to develop. Those able to make purchasing decisions are willing to buy, but know that the technology is far away. The knowledge problem for building systems is getting the best engineers and the forward looking owners to know what the other knows.

Looking Ahead: The Self Maintaining, Self Repairing Facility

So how do building systems fit together in the future? I have some pretty solid ideas about what it will look like, but it is hard to project the time sequence, or the time scale. Here’s what I see.

Building designers will come to recognize the importance of data stewardship. Building systems will deliver information back to the designers and owners on actual building performance. This information will guide future programming, design, construction, and operations. Similar informational interfaces will support the business and regulatory environment of the building.

Buildings will be designed and constructed to be an integrated system of intelligent systems. These intelligent systems will use the information from self monitoring equipment and systems to continuously optimize conditions and performance. Intelligent buildings will actively support business operations. Facilities owners, operators, and service providers will all be able to access the same systems information in real time. They will use this information to respond to changes in business and environmental requirements to ensure that the facility will continue to support each intended use, old or new.

Each building system will stand alone yet interact with others as the higher level of a business service. Each system will gather data from its sensors and manage its actuators to support and defend the service it provides. Each building system will hide its internal operations, exposing accurate actionable information for continuous decision support.

Within each class of service, systems will compete to deliver the most economical or highest quality service through standards based interfaces. Each system will analyze its own operations to flag problems and make recommendations for external intervention. Each system will share information transparently with other systems, without requiring deep integration with other systems. Building owners will take advantage of informational interoperability to select systems based upon the quality of information and of the underlying operations without regard to the specific technologies used within each system.

Resilient systems of systems will ensure optimal facility utilization and operation even during crises. Each systems will attain situation awareness through communications with its peer systems and with systems external to the building. Examples of external communications include weather stations, demand/response requests from the power company, and emergency (CAP) alerts from homeland security.

One mission of each system in the buildings is to support the effective and efficient performance of the business functions within that facility. The facilities operations of an intelligent building are energy efficient, environmentally correct, and sustainable while leaving a minimal [carbon] footprint.

Building systems will interact to requests in support of business operations and tenants using communications protocols and interaction patterns familiar to enterprise programmers. Because each system defends its mission and exposes only informational interfaces, these interactions will be safe and secure.

Facilities operations will define system performance by the provision of business services, not the operations of process and inputs. Examples of business systems expressed as services include healthful work environment, alert students, regulatory compliance and system metrics will align themselves with these measures. Landlords offering such services will experience lower vacancies and be able to charge higher rents as they are able to document the Quality of Services (QOS) they offer.

More than One Control System per Building

A few years back, we passed around a list, and quickly came up with more than 40 different types of building control systems. It was a nice list, a comprehensive list – except it was not.

When I returned home, I shared the list with someone I worked with whose work I respected. The colleague worked in a part of the University that was called, at that time, Classroom Technologies. I described how we were going to come up with a way to interact with these systems. He glanced at the list for just a moment and said “But you left off what I do – AV and Event Management…”

A week later, another friend, who worked with systems at the hospital, and I were enjoying the late spring weather during an afternoon of malted beverages at the fine Chapel Hill old beer garden “He’s Not Here”. He asked if he could see the list, and right off said “Where’s Medical Gas Distribution?”

And so my education went.

Each of these control systems have a different mission. The primary service each can provide the enterprise is to defend its mission first, and to respond to requests second. Even when systems look alike, and use the same protocols, they may have different missions. Vents, fans, actuators, and ducts? It is either a HVAC or it is a Laboratory Fume Hood. Woe betide the person who flood the lab with poisonous gas because he thinks he is working on the former.

I think that control systems should be smaller. Too often they are as large as people can make them, based upon shared communication protocols. They need to be smaller, small enough to have a single mission. Then we need to make them perform that mission well.