When it comes to power consumption, there’s often much more going on than meets the eye.
Smart house technology has been around for quite some time. However, to be truly environmentally conscious, we need to think a little bigger.
Project Aquila aspires to solve the issue of power consumption (and maybe save a bit of energy and money) with a smart monitoring system for factories and commercial buildings that combines BIM and IoT.
Smart Monitoring for Residences
Bill Gates’ design for controlling the rate of power consumption involves a set of sensors placed strategically throughout his house. These sensors control everything from the lights to the security system.
Technology like the Nest thermostat provides smart monitoring and energy consumption control for residences, but alternate options are needed for commercial structures. (Image courtesy of Nest.)
Although it’s called a thermostat, this little piece of the future is really a residential energy consumption companion.
It provides tips for best practices in particular neighborhoods and monitors energy levels to produce reports for the homeowner.
This technology easily covers the need for residential power consumption control, but factories and large commercial buildings place an even bigger strain on the grid.
Just imagine: where a residence averages 10,000 kwh per year according to the EIA, commercial buildings start in the millions.
What can we do about that?
A Combination of BIM and IoT
Project Aquila is the brainchild of Autodesk Labs, where it is currently a free technology preview. It is a cloud-based app combining IoT systems with building information modeling (BIM) to create monitoring systems for large commercial buildings.
So how does it work?
Please note that this video has no audio. (Video courtesy of Autodesk Labs.)
As shown in the video, Project Aquila promises to provide a system for energy consumption monitoring that can combine a structured IoT network with 2D floorplans and images and 3D BIM models.
The app lets the user move through the rooms of a facility – in this case, the Autodesk Pier 9 building. It shows power consumption levels, both for the whole building and for different types of devices.
Project Aquila also demonstrates the ability to navigate the facility layout in 2D and 3D, showing where IoT connections can be dragged to match devices in the BIM layout.
Monitoring energy consumption in large factories and commercial buildings like the one rendered above could change the way these buildings are run. (Image courtesy of Autodesk.)
The Project Aquila concept has a lot to offer in the field of energy conservancy. While we do have systems to save energy in our homes, larger structures are lacking.
Even if the project itself doesn’t pan out, this type of smart monitoring technology has huge potential for today’s industry.
Green building initiatives could benefit from a combination of BIM and IoT. For example, this type of system could monitor and manage energy levels in large factories to reduce wasted energy from idling or improper timing. These aspects of factories are generally difficult to locate, let alone manage.
This level of improvement could make a huge difference in how much power is available on the grid – and how much power we really need to produce in order to maintain infrastructure.
Project Aquila is still in its R&D stage, with several months of research left before any definitive results are released. For more information on the project or to download the preview, visit the Autodesk Labs website.