Needs
The purpose of room control is to provide a comfortable environment for building occupants at the lowest possible energy consumption. Providing a comfortable environment goes beyond just temperature control. Depending on the building's needs, it could include looking at the indoor air quality and/or humidity, maintaining the desired light level, glare or privacy protection, or even providing different light colors depending on the room use. The key to minimizing the energy consumption is controlling room conditions based on the actual demand, to avoid the excess consumption of heating, cooling, and lighting energy.
This includes reacting to room occupancy, but can also involve the active management of blind and shutters.
Ease of use is another key factor. People want a consistent user interface covering the whole room − not several inconsistent user interfaces for the different equipment. It is also important to provide a nice, harmonic room design. The amount of sensors and user interfaces must therefore be kept at a minimum and nicely fit to the room design.
Solutions
CentraLine offers a comprehensive set of freely programmable and configurable room controllers for a large variety of HVAC room applications (e.g., Fan Coil Units, Chilled Ceiling, Hydronic Heating, or VAV applications). These include solutions for the management of lighting, shutters, and blinds along with temperature control. For special customer needs, CentraLine also offers freely programmable room controllers which satisfy the requirements of any room configuration.
The MERLIN NX room controller is free programmable in Niagara, provides flexible, freely programmable and demand-led control that delivers tangible benefits to reduce energy spends and drives new levels of functionality and efficiency in today’s buildings. With scalable and freely programmable BACnet MS/TP-based room controllers, smart engineering & commissioning tools, and SYLK technology, multiple and flexible configurations can be achieved to address specific applications. The Modbus RTU Interface provides integration possibility of Modbus RTU devices like sensors, I/O modules (e.g. for light / blind control), VAV dampers (with air flow feed-back), wall modules etc. and enables a flexible, scalable room control system. The Master / Follower concept allows bulk commissioning of rooms.
The MERLIN NX Compact VAV completes the MERLIN NX offering on BACnet MS/TP also for variable air volume Applications. The MERLIN NX Compact VAV is a compact, flexible, freely programmable and innovative VAV controller that offers performance-based engineering with Niagara eXtended (NX) which enables Single-Tool-Engineering throughout the whole Building Management System and allows cost-effective installation and commissioning.
The DALI64 LIGHTING SYSTEM is a fully featured 64 Address DALI 2 lighting control system embedded within a best in class LightSpot HD sensor. Combined with MERLIN NX room controller high energy cost savings as well as increased comfort for the end-user can be realized. It allows a simple implementation of a powerful DALI addressable system into the CentraLine NX system to offer smart integrated room control solutions.
Honeywell's EasyClickPro wireless light and blind control solutions are an excellent choice for retrofit opportunities. They allow the easy replacement of conventional installations with electronic light and blind controllers. Battery-less switches that can be installed where needed, independent of the presence of wires. In contrast to similar 3rd-party offerings, the EasyClickPro wireless solutions are designed from ground up for integration with the CentraLine BMS system.
All the aforementioned room controllers are networked, providing the basis for demand-driven applications which optimize energy consumption by requesting only the minimum amount of energy to maintain comfortable room conditions from the primary plant controllers.
Using CentraLine's smart embedded integration platform HAWK or EAGLEHAWK NX, room control can easily be extended to include wired light and blind control via KNX, DALI, or the wireless EnOcean protocol. For hotel applications, they can also communicate with the room reservation system using a Fidelio protocol, which saves energy for unrented rooms.
Products
INTEGRATED ROOM CONTROL
MERLIN NX
With Niagar eXtended (NX) freely programmable BACnet MS/TP room controller, integrating ligting and shading.
DALI2 LIGHTING SYSTEMS
DALI64 DLS
DALI64 is a fully featured DALI2 addressable lighting control system embedded within a PIR sensor which include Modbus and BLE interfaces.
WIRELESS LIGHTING/SHADING
EasyClickPro
Wireless and batteryless system for lighting, shutter and room temperature control, based on the market leading EnOcean standard. Energy efficient, maintenance free, extensive and flexible where use of space utilization changes.
Variable Air Volume control
MERLIN NX Compact VAV
With Niagara eXtended (NX) free programmable compact BACnet MS/TP VAV controller with integrated actuator and air flow sensor.
Insights
MANAGING ENERGY CONSUMPTION IN HOSPITALITY APPLICATIONS
In rooms with changing use, a significant amount of energy can be saved when managing the room according to its current occupation status. Hotel rooms are a good example: There is no reason why a room should remain in comfort conditions when no guest is present. CentraLine room solutions can integrate with hotel management systems using a Fidelio driver. Through this connection, the BMS system knows which rooms are rented. Based on the information on whether a room is rented or not and based on its occupancy status, the BMS system can then adjust the "zero energy band" of the room controllers:
- When a room is not rented, the temperature is allowed to float significantly around the setpoint. Heating or cooling will be activated only if the temperature reaches critical levels.
- If the room is rented but not occupied, the temperature deviation is restricted by putting the room in standby mode. This preconditions the room such that it can quickly reach comfort condition once the guest steps into the area. In unoccupied rooms, the lights can also be automatically switched off to avoid energy waste caused by occupants forgetting to switch off electrical consumers.
- If the room is rented and occupied, the temperature is controlled around minimum deviation from the selected setpoint to provide maximum comfort to the guest.
In combination with the demand-driven system architecture of CentraLine solutions, only the minimum energy to maintain the required temperature levels is produced, thus providing significant energy savings.