When discussing energy management and sustainability, you may encounter many specialized terms.This glossary is a helpful guide to important words and terms related to managing energy and automating buildings. It covers a variety of technologies, systems, and ways of doing things, making it a great tool for anyone looking to learn more about how modern energy systems work.
- Application Programming Interface (API):
Set of instructions and rules provided in order to enable other software programs, databases, or devices to communicate and exchange data with it. It is the ‘interface’ used by applications to interact with each other.
- Building Automation Control Systems (BACS):
A centralised set-up that monitors and controls the various systems within a building such as the lights, heating/cooling, and other application domains. It can be used to automate certain functions that follow set rules to help in energy management.
- Customer Energy Managert (CEM):
It is the brain of an energy management system that plays an active role rather than being a passive one. With the right devices, application domains, and configuration, CEM will contribute more to the energy management efforts and optimize energy consumption even further.
- Demand-Driven Based Control:
An approach to dynamically manage energy output based on the demand for energy that arises within the grid.
- Energy Management:
The active process of planning, monitoring, and optimizing the energy production, consumption, distribution and storage within a home or a building. Objectives are resource conservation, climate protection and cost savings, while the users have permanent access to the energy they need.
- Energy Management Gateway:
A device that performs communication functions between various networks of devices within a system to improve its interoperability.
- Electric Vehicle:
An electric vehicle (EV) replaces the internal-combustion engine, which generates power by burning fuel, with an electric motor that runs on electricity and is commonly powered by batteries. They are more eco-friendly as they produce fewer emissions and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
- Fill Rate-Based Control:
Fill rate is the percentage of demand that can be met without lagging in supply. By using fill-rate as the basis for determining the energy production, conservation and optimization of energy can be done without failing to satisfy demands.
- Human-Machine Interface:
The combination of hardware and software that enable a human operator to monitor and control the processes run by one or a network of devices or systems. An ideal interface will clearly represent the processes being controlled, the associated values of process and output parameters, and simplify the access to perform important and regular tasks
- Operation Mode Based Control:
A facility has various stages in its process cycle that include powering up, regular functioning, transitions, maintenance, and other similar stages. Operation Mode Based Control provides the monitoring actions related to each of these stages
- Power Envelope Based Control:
Power Envelope is the aggregated measure of the extreme values of the power output over a period of time. Power Envelope Based Control allows you to set limits to these power envelopes for certain periods of time.
- Power Profile Based Control:
Power profiles are configurations that set the energy consumption levels of equipment and systems to achieve a defined goal. Some examples of power profiles can be “Maximize output”, “Minimize energy consumption” or any custom level of performance.
- Smart Grid:
An electrical grid— which is a network of transmission lines, substations, transformers and that delivers electricity from points of generation to points of consumption— that is made “smarter” with two-way communication, automation, control, and monitoring systems to ensure efficiency and reliability.
- Tariff Based Energy Management:
Optimization of energy usage that considers the tariffs or taxes imposed on energy consumption as the primary factor for decision making.
- Vehicle to Grid:
A concept or system which allows a network of electric vehicles to plug into a power grid and act as a source of power or power storage. Depending on the changes in demand or supply for power, these networked vehicle batteries can send power to the grid or store excess power for later use.
- Home and Building Electronic System:
EN 50090 is a European standard for Home and Building Electronic Systems (HBES) open communications, issued by CENELEC. It covers any combination of electronic devices linked via a digital transmission network to provide automated, decentralised and distributed process control for domestic and commercial and building applications; for example the control of lighting, heating, food preparation, washing, energy management, water, fire alarms, blinds, security, etc.