HVAC drives offer BACnet support as standard

ABB claims it is the first drives supplier to support the BACnet communications protocol as standard on its HVAC drives. BACnet - a protocol developed for Building Automation and Control Networks -- is used widely in North America, and increasingly in Europe, to allow plug-and-play integration of building services devices.

The protocol has been under development since 1987 by Ashrae - the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineers. Last year, it was accepted as an ISO global standard and is a European pre-standard.

In the past, drives could only be connected to a BMS (building management system) through a gateway, which had to be programmed on a point-by-point basis. Alternatively, drives could be hardwired into the BMS to provide basic control and monitoring.

ABB says that its BACnet-enabled drives will connect directly into networks to take advantages of features such as auto-discovery, dynamic binding, time synchronisation, and read/write variable requests.

"The absence of gateways makes the connection more direct," explains Nick Thorne, ABB`s HVAC sales manager. "Real-time serial communications means better information, enabling operators to make better energy management decisions. With a PC and an Internet browser, you can monitor and modify the operation of your HVAC system from wherever you are."

BACnet is embedded in the standard RS485 interface of ABB`s HVAC drives. The drives also support other protocols including Modbus, Profibus-DP, Interbus, Lonworks, CANopen, DeviceNet, ControlNet and Ethernet.