Building Automation? Modern building automation solutions are required to fulfill many often diverse and demanding objectives. Foremost among these are the need to provide comfort, security and energy efficiency. Depending on the purpose of the building, facility, campus or enterprise, other common requirements include: fire detection and life safety assurance, enterprise system integration, regulatory compliance support, critical parameter and cleanliness level maintenance, data logging and alarm management.
2 INTRODUCTION In recent years some debate has arisen as to whether Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are suitable as an alternative to Building Management Systems (BMSs) to meet these needs. This paper is intended to provide a concise historical review of the technologies and an objective comparison between the two solution platforms, their relative merits and application suitabilities.
SOME EARLY HISTORY The PLC was invented in 1968 by Richard Morley and his colleagues within Bedford Associates, a small, New Hampshire based engineering consulting firm. The Modicon (Modular Digital Controller) Company was incorporated in 1969, building a substantial business around these new devices. The initial sales success of PLCs was in the area of transfer lines in automotive plants. Over the years the capabilities and application scope of PLCs have dramatically increased but automotive manufacturing remains their most significant market. Nearly four decades later, the PLC is arguably the most widely used product type in the industrial automation business, with a worldwide market of several billions of dollars per year and available from hundreds of different sources, in many different form-factors (including embedded) and prices ranging from tens of thousands of dollars (for triple redundant, failure-proof systems) to commodity, catalog products at less than a hundred dollars.
In 1975, Mr. Morley was also a founder of Andover Controls. This companys first product, the Sunkeeper, was targeted at the solar energy management market and introduced the worlds first Direct Digital Control (DDC) system. The companys products quickly evolved encompassing much wider building management responsibilities. The product lines included the highly successful AC256 introduced in 1981, the Infinity system which debuted in 1989 and the currently available Continuum system which followed in 1997.
One may speculate as to why PLCs were not simply applied to building management applications from the very beginning. Were business and technical needs left unmet, giving rise to building automation companies such as Andover Controls? The simple answer is yes; the deficiencies of PLCs for building management applications effectively spawned the modern digital Building Management Systems market. Indeed, in a recent interview with Mr. Morley, he explained anyone trying to apply PLCs to building automation applications is investing in excessive, divergent performance.
Today, both of the product heritages of Modicon and Andover Controls are owned by Schneider Electric, the worlds power and control specialists. This uniquely privileged position allows us to present a fair and balanced comparison between these two categories of powerful automation solutions.
Richard Morley with the worlds first PLC, the Modicon 084.
3 KEY REQUIREMENTS DIFFERENCES It should be kept in mind that a fundamental difference in design intent exists between BMS and PLC systems. BMS systems are primarily intended to control and protect the environment around people, physical assets and data. PLC systems are primarily intended to control and protect the production capacity of machines and manufacturing lines. This basic distinction underlies many of the following comparison points not just in terms of the enabling technologies but also the types of companies and people involved in the successful completion of building automation projects and the ongoing service and maintenance of these systems.
SYSTEM TOPOLOGIES Buildings are big. Space control requirements can range from a few hundred square feet well into the millions. This space may be distributed across several buildings of a campus or even many multi- building facilities across a country or continent. BMS systems have evolved to meet this type of control challenge. PLC systems are usually physically limited to a single machine or production line within a single building.
NUMBER OF USERS BMS systems are designed to have many users with diverse needs interacting with the system on several levels through multiple devices. This can range from an office worker changing the setpoint on their local thermostat through to a Facility Director viewing plantwide energy efficiency statistics through a web browser. Configurations supporting various classes of users with a wide range of privilege sets are common. From an all-powerful administration account through to read-only access to a few points on a single screen, modern BMS systems can easily be configured to provide vastly different users experiences to a common system depending on the location, function and authority level of the various user types.
4 In contrast, PLC systems often have only very localized user interfaces. This makes sense because of the need for close proximity of the operator to the machine to verify its correct operation and to perform mechanical maintenance. Where connection to enterprise systems is provided it is often through standardized interfaces such as OPC. 3rd party SCADA vendors provide many of the system level views of PLC-based configurations.
DEGREE OF DETERMINISM Generally speaking, BMS systems operate around human time. Air conditioning control sequences are triggered by occupancy conditions and the comings and goings of facility area occupants are captured in familiar time/date formats.
In contrast, PLCs are usually designed to operate in the 1-50 millisecond scan-time range and are generally concerned with machine time (i.e. their operation is based upon mechanical and electro- mechanical system dynamics.) As a consequence, all other functions are subjugated to logic and I/O processing in order to ensure highly deterministic system operation. BMS systems are typically more adaptive in that they give communications functions a much higher priority. Part of the reason for this is that the individual controllers have been designed from the very outset to be part of a larger system and hence awareness of their availability and ability to interact with the rest of the system is fundamental to the overall system operation.
An example of an important difference in communications approaches between the two types of systems is that BMSs, along with regular I/O scanning mechanisms, have long featured (over 20 years) built-in report-by-exception capabilities.
Three types of information can be reported by exception: 1. Alarms 2. Change of value 3. Object attributes referenced by other controllers
This mixed scanning/exception reporting approach makes highly efficient use of communications bandwidth, thereby delivering optimal system performance, while only minimally impacting overall system determinacy.
Although both BMS and PLC field controllers can function in a standalone manner, it is much more common for PLCs to act as localized islands of automation. While there is a very significant trend in networking PLCs over various fieldbusses, they remain far more functionally isolated than controllers in a typical BMS installation.
ALARM DETECTION AND MANAGEMENT Alarms within BMS architectures are generally detected at the field controller level. The various alarm limits and notification destinations (where the alarms should be sent) are basic attributes of the monitored values and are distributed and processed as close to the signal source as possible. In PLC- based architectures alarm management is almost always performed only at the SCADA level. While functional, this is a far less robust approach, as the workstations are much more likely to become unavailable than the PLCs. Another disadvantage to this approach is that transient alarm conditions are
5 far more likely to be missed because of the communications overheads and asynchronous task processing of the two system levels.
DATA LOGGING BMS systems are often used to provide both short and long-term records of environmental parameters. Great quantities (1,000s) of these logs can be stored near their signal sources within distributed field controllers as well as being aggregated in more centralized database resources. BMS systems are designed to automatically provide this capability with simple configuration options. Of course, PLCs have local storage capabilities but are generally oblivious to human real time (time of day etc.) and a great deal of custom application programming is required to even approximate the logging functionality natively available within a BMS field controller.
NATURE OF THE MEDIUM One often overlooked attribute of the air handling aspect of building automation is that the medium under control (the air) affords the control system a degree of natural fault tolerance. BMS architectures are designed to allow subsystems to be temporarily taken out of service for maintenance or repair without dramatically impacting the quality of the overall environment. This is due to the fact that other operational subsystems will generally compensate for the non-functional unit. The overall system may be temporarily unbalanced but a comfortable environment is normally maintained. BMS systems have evolved to anticipate such circumstances. In contrast, systems controlled by PLCs are usually rendered entirely inoperable should the PLC fail.
PURPOSE BUILT = LOWER INSTALLED COST When contrasting the I/O types of PLC and BMS systems it soon becomes evident that the BMS I/O is, not surprisingly, more adapted to control the types of devices commonly found in air handling and security management applications. For example, BMS field controllers are available with built-in airflow sensors and damper actuator motors. These controllers are purpose-built to be mounted directly onto ductwork. No equivalent to this exists in the PLC world.
Another feature of BMS field controller I/O is that of built-in signal conditioning. This often overcomes the need for separate and expensive signal conditioning blocks. A variety of signals from input devices such as thermistors and airflow sensors are characterized directly within the firmware of the I/O module to provide the software with linearized SI and Imperial standard signal representations. In most PLCs, costly, specialist I/O modules are required to perform the equivalent task. It is also very common for BMS field controller I/O to feature built-in manual override switches and potentiometers - so called Hand/Off/Auto switches. These are extremely useful during system commissioning and servicing and when a controller is temporarily offline from the rest of the system. It is very unusual to find this feature in PLCs.
6 Thermistors are a good example of fitness-for-purpose of sensors in building automation applications. As PLCs became applied to an ever widening range of industrial control applications, the absolute and range of temperatures they became expected to monitor and control were only able to be provided from thermocouples. Thermistors, on the other hand, while less linear are far more cost-effective and practical for the temperatures typically encountered in building automation applications. In fact, one of the earliest and still very evident differentiators of PLCs and BMS field controllers is in their ability to natively condition thermistor signals.
INTEGRATION NOT INTERFACING PLCs are sometimes interfaced to a few complementary automation devices. This frequently requires custom coding and significant engineering time. In comparison, BMSs usually support extensive, native integration capabilities and are often tied to dozens of facility subsystems. As shown below, such subsystems include: power, utilities, process, security and life safety. The BMS can also form a consistent means to integrate with higher level enterprise business applications such as Manufacturing Execution (MES) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. For example, to support security integration; BMS systems have dedicated I/O modules to perform functions such as door controls. Along with dedicated digital I/O (request to exit, door strike etc.), these modules incorporate specialized communications protocols (such as Weigand) that allow easy integration with a huge variety of ID verification devices including proximity card readers and biometric recognition devices.
+ Airflow Sensor + Actuator + Room Sensor + Signal Conditioners + Lots of Engineering + Enclosure (Plenum- mount) = PLC High Installed Cost
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SOPHISTICATED OBJECT MODEL BMS are built around a sophisticated, distributed software object model. The system database holds a complete topological map, data/program image and revision history for every physical and logical entity within the system. This approach supports a high degree of automatic configuration management. The object types themselves range from simple discrete I/O to complex compound objects such as doors. While outwardly a door may appear to be a simple control object, dozens of attributes may apply to each instance.
REGULATED INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS In highly regulated industries such as pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing, a common requirement is to be able to provide proof of compliance with regulations through the use of automated systems. A clear advantage of BMS systems in this area is that they are database centric. PLCs are local memory centric. This means that a BMS has a far greater capacity to keep long term records of all critical facility related events and parameters. Indeed, a fundamental requirement of the Electronic Records and Signatures regulation (21 CFR Part 11) is that comprehensive audit trails be maintained. The database centric nature of a BMS makes this a straightforward task to accomplish. In contrast, the limited local memory of a PLC has little, if any, capacity to capture this critical information.
THE MYTH OF IEC 61131-3 The IEC standard 61131-3 has been available now for over 15 years. The intention of this standard is to provide a high degree of basic functional uniformity from the control products of industrial automation systems manufacturers. The idea was that system users would be able to create rich, vendor- independent libraries of reusable control code.
While this is a commendable objective, it has met with limited success. From a building automation standpoint a fundamental problem is that the standard is written around the use of traditional PLC programming languages and software structuring tools - Ladder Diagram, Function Block Diagram, Instruction List, Structured Text and Sequential Function Charts.
These languages are well suited to machine and production line applications but not to BMS applications. They are not particularly object oriented and do not intuitively map to common BMS control requirements.
Another major problem is that the IEC 61131-3 languages are extensible. This means that the different manufacturers can and do create proprietary extensions to their implementations which severely limits the degree of portability and reusability of any application code developed.
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NETWORKING DIFFERENCES BMS and PLC networks have evolved separately and differently. Today almost all BMS manufacturers offer systems based on either or both of the open standards, LONWorks and BACnet. These communications standards are sophisticated, well-defined and their implementation is well controlled. This affords BMS users a high degree of integration capability. These networks natively support the object types and services required by the building automation world. LONWorks and BACnet are also natively supported by a wide range of complementary devices such as variable speed drives, power monitoring and metering equipment and lighting controllers.
The network standards prevalent among PLCs are generally less sophisticated and rooted in the proprietary technology of the larger vendors. Profibus and DeviceNet are good examples. While these network technologies are highly functional for machine automation applications, they are cumbersome to implement and not a good fit for building automation applications.
DON'T PAY FOR WHAT YOU DONT NEED As PLCs were originally invented to replace cabinets full of electro-mechanical relays situated near (and sometimes even on) production equipment, it was imperative that they were able to withstand the electrical and mechanical rigors of these harsh environments. The I/O boards of PLCs therefore generally feature a high degree of channel to channel isolation, electrical noise suppression capability and mechanical ruggedization. Some models even allow defective I/O modules to be replaced under power or so-called hot-swapped. While these features are necessary for such industrial control applications, they do add significant cost to the design of PLCs. BMS field controllers have been designed to operate in the utilities environment of a facility which is typically far less severe. The electrical and mechanical design of BMS field controllers has therefore evolved to be better suited to such conditions. A significant commercial advantage of BMS field controllers over PLCs is that the user does not pay for a degree of product ruggedization unnecessary for the application.
PLC Program BMS Configure
9 EASE OF SOLUTION Perhaps the greatest single advantage of BMS over PLCs falls in the area of ease-of-solution or engineering costs. As the workhouse of the industrial automation world, modern PLCs are undoubtedly highly flexible and reliable devices. Given the target physical application domain of facility management, there exist no significant reliability difference between BMS and PLCs. However, a tremendous difference does exist in application engineering time and costs. In part due to the very flexible nature of PLCs, the amount of work required to perform even rudimentary facility automation tasks with these devices can be many times that required when employing purpose-build BMS solutions. For example, consider the work involved in setting up a control sequence for a fan-coil unit application as shown in the figure below. This would require a great deal of bespoke code development in a PLC while a BMS controller would only require straightforward configuration of its built-in functionality.
CONCLUSION PLCs and BMS have evolved into powerful automation solutions. PLCs are extremely versatile and with enough effort can be used to meet the needs of almost any automation application. BMS, on the other hand, have a more restricted application domain but a far higher degree of fitness for their intended application scope. As shown in the diagram below, for small standalone system installations PLC and BMS costs may be comparable but for larger, more sophisticated installations, overall engineering, maintenance and operating cost will become increasingly higher for PLC-based over BMS based systems. Another important consideration is that PLC-based systems will reach practical application size, complexity and manageability limits long before BMS-based solutions.
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Of equal, if not greater, importance than the control equipment used on a building automation application is the expertise and experience of the organizations and individuals providing system engineering and support services. It should be recognized that, generally speaking, PLC integrators typically have no building automation expertise and their staff are traditionally from electrical engineering backgrounds. In more recent years this type of integrator has been taking on more staff with software development expertise. Equally, BMS integrators rarely have process or machine control expertise and their staff are traditionally from mechanical automation backgrounds. In more recent years this type of integrator has been taking on more staff with IT expertise.
As we have seen, while they have some historical and technical commonalities, PLC and BMS systems have followed necessarily different evolutionary paths with BMS systems being more highly adapted to the building management applications domain. Equally, PLCs perform a vitally important role in the industrial manufacturing and process automation worlds.
P PL LC C B BM MS S Application Complexity Low Intelligent Building High Installed Cost Simple Equipment Control
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It is important to appreciate that these two automation solution platforms deliver complementary functionality. As industrial processes and the surrounding environments of the machines and people that control them are increasingly recognized to be interdependent, integrating PLC and BMS systems is becoming ever more common. Fortunately, straightforward integration is facilitated by many network protocol, software interface and database standards such as Modbus, TCP/IP, XML, OPC, SQL and ODBC.
Low High Applications SCADA PLC BMS Fitness
The following diagram summarizes the key differences between PLC and BMS systems for use in building management applications.
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