Buildings are responsible for around 40% of energy consumption in the EU – a large proportion of which is accounted for by inefficient heating, ventilation and lighting systems. This is where the Building automation for energy efficiency for energy efficiency: It turns simple buildings into intelligent, responsive environments.
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What is building automation?
Building automation (BA) refers to the entirety of software and hardware solutions that automatically control, regulate and monitor technical processes in a building.
Instead of each system (heating, lighting, shading) working in isolation, they are networked via a central system. Sensors record data such as temperature, CO₂ content or presence, and actuators execute the corresponding commands – without any manual intervention.
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How does building automation contribute to energy efficiency?
The significant influence of building automation on energy efficiency lies in demand-based control. Energy efficiency through building automation means:
Demand orientation: energy only in the right place at the right time
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This is the most visible part of automation. The building reacts to its users in real time.
- Presence control: Lighting, heating and ventilation are only activated in rooms that are in use.
- Volume flow control: The ventilation intensity adapts to the actual number of people via CO2 sensors – this saves drive energy and heating energy.
- Daylight utilization: Sensors measure the natural brightness and dim the artificial light continuously or control the blinds for optimum solar yield.
Intelligent logic: trades that communicate with each other
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In conventional buildings, heating and cooling often work against each other. GA eliminates this inefficiency.
- Interoperability: When a window is opened, the heating automatically switches to frost protection mode.
- Avoidance of simultaneity: The system guarantees absolute separation between heating and cooling, so that both systems never consume energy at the same time.
- Predictive control (prediction): Solar heat is anticipated by integrating weather forecasts. The building “knows” in the morning that it will not need to heat at midday because the sun will warm the rooms.
System optimization: efficiency in the background
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This is about the technical performance of the systems, which the user often does not even notice, but which offer the greatest potential for electrical and thermal savings. offers.
- Optimization of generator efficiency: The GA reports the exact demand of the rooms to the control center, allowing flow temperatures of heat pumps or boilers to be reduced to a minimum.
- Night cooling (free cooling): On summer nights, the system opens automated windows or uses the ventilation to pre-cool the building without an expensive chiller.
- Load management (peak shaving): Intelligent energy management avoids electricity peaks by postponing energy-intensive processes.
Savings potential of building automation
The energy savings through building automation is not a blanket figure, but is divided into two main areas: thermal energy and electrical energy. Especially in non-residential buildings (such as offices or retail), where space heating accounts for over 70 % of final energy consumption, the leverage is enormous.
According to current calculation models, there are significant differences when changing the building automation class depending on the type of building:
- Thermal energy:
- The effect is greatest in office buildings: an upgrade from class C to A can reduce the potential by up to 30 %.
- In residential buildings the savings when switching from C to A are still approx. 19 %.
- Electrical energy:
- Here, the path from class C to A in office buildings leads to savings of around 13 %.
- In residential buildings, this value is approx. 8 %.
Important for practice: the reality check
Theoretical savings are a good guide, but in practice there are two important factors:
In order to really exploit the potential, continuous monitoring of the monitoring of the system data is essential.
Building automation classes
The standard DIN EN 15232 defines four building automation efficiency classes. To achieve a certain building automation class specific functions must be fulfilled:
Class
Level
Detailed requirements & functions
A
Highly efficient
- Seamless monitoring
- Adaptive demand control
- Maximum networking
- Intelligent maintenance
B
Photo steps
- Targeted system optimization
- Energy monitoring
- Part monitoring (monitoring of important technical main components)
- Individual room control
C
Standard
- Time-controlled operation
- Conventional technology (e.g. classic thermostatic valves on the radiators)
- No active energy monitoring available
- Isolated control: No overarching automation of the individual rooms.
D
Inefficient
- Manual control
- No networking between the technical components.
- Use of classic fixed value controllers without dynamics
- Continuous operation: No night setback or energy-saving modes.
- No individual room control
Building automation and GEG or soon GMG
The Building Automation in the Building Energy Act (GEG) already obliges owners of large non-residential buildings to install building automation systems (at least class B for new buildings).
With the planned further development of the Building Modernization Act (GMG) could result in changes in the future. However, it remains to be seen how this will actually work out.
In the practice of building automation – for example when implementing modern DDC systems and BMS software – VDI 3814 serves as a binding framework for structured, future-proof solutions.
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