IOTech’s new partnership with SHIFT Energy showcased at AHR
We recently attended the fantastic AHR Expo in the Windy City, for those in the Building Automation or Building Management sector it’s the go-to event for all things HVAC-R. It brings together manufacturers & suppliers of all sizes & specialties to share ideas and showcase the future of HVAC-R technology. Quoting from AHR, “It’s the industry’s best place for OEMs, engineers, contractors, facility operators, architects, educators, and other professionals to experience everything new in HVACR and build the vital relationships that grow businesses and careers.”
We had the opportunity to attend this event with our partner SHIFT Energy to demonstrate how their EOS product suite can cut costs and improve performance in your building.
SHIFT Energy’s EOSair™ uses IOTech Edge Central™ to securely acquire data from Building Automation Systems (BAS) or Building Management Systems (BMS). From there, it is sent to the cloud where it is analyzed by SHIFT using Machine Learning and predictive modeling, with the resulting optimizations provided directly to the building control system to boost operational efficiency.
SHIFT Energy chose to partner with IOTech for a number of reasons:
- Open Platform and Architecture – this ensures the efficient collection and distribution of building data to SHIFT’s EOS products using modern and non-proprietary protocols. Toolsets offered by IOTech make backend data integration and data distribution much more efficient.
- Data Acquisition and Database Storage – Edge Central offers better administrative dashboards that allow for easier discovery of devices and networks. It is also much easier to troubleshoot using Edge Central, which allows problems to be identified and resolved before they become issues for tenants.
- BYOD – with SHIFT and Edge Central, you can “bring your own device” - there is no need to use clumsy or expensive proprietary equipment. Edge Central is a software-only solution that can run on any Linux-based hardware. This gives SHIFT greater flexibility to choose the best hardware for our gateways.
- Predefined Schema and Tagging – IOTech's software defines event schema across portfolios of buildings, with tags easily assigned through a specific device profile. This feature allows SHIFT to organize points and associate every point with a specific building, zone, space, or device to use them in optimizations.
- Flexible Rules Engine – the flow-based automation utility included in Edge Central enables SHIFT to implement EOS-specific read, discovery, and control flows which will also allow us to implement local optimizations.
- Better Support – open-source software offers a wealth of readily accessible knowledge. Edge Central is a well-supported version of EdgeX Foundry which offers a number of popular and widely adopted utilities.
SHIFT delivers its customers significant energy consumption and cost savings while also curbing Greenhouse Gas emissions – all without any impact on occupant comfort or process control conditions.
See you next year at AHR!