A private, college-preparatory school situated on a 28 acre campus offers facilities including an award-winning athletic center, academic buildings, a music center and residence halls. When FMC first visited the school, we found a wide variety of control systems in use at the various buildings. There was some Direct Digital Control (DDC), however each building “stood alone” and there was no common operator interface.
The school’s primary need was to provide a cohesive control system with a remote monitoring station(s) that had a common “look and feel” for each building. Other issues for the school were; re-commissioning the existing local controls, improving the indoor learning environment for the students, lowering the maintenance cost of the existing HVAC equipment and saving energy.
To achieve this, FMC recommended the installation of a LonWorks based control and monitoring system with a web-enabled graphical user interface operator workstation. The LonWorks system communicates directly with the existing LonWorks products and uses “gateways” to communicate with other “legacy” devices.
By implementing a LonWorks solution, the school has installed a powerful, yet scalable system where future upgrades can come from a variety of manufacturers, and seamlessly integrate with the existing control equipment.