December 2012
By Bill Lydon, Editor
Tom Burke emphasized that the goals of the OPC Foundation are community, connectivity, collaboration, and compliance. The BIG-EU collaboration has the goal to optimize the data flow between systems utilizing BACnet communications and industrial and process control systems. The BACnet Interest Group Europe (BIG-EU) and the OPC Foundation signed a cooperation statement on November 13th, 2012. A joint working group is proceeding to define the interface between BACnet (ANSI ASHRAE 135 / ISO 16484-5) and OPC-UA (IEC 62541) that makes the data flow between the building and industrial automation systems easy to use.
The ability to map BACnet into OPC UA objects is significant for a number of reasons. For example, many applications including semiconductor, pharmaceutical, food & beverage, and chemical production require the building automation and industrial control systems to coordinate control to guarantee manufacturing quality. Another example is the optimization of the entire plant operation at an enterprise level based on real-time material and energy costs. In September, at the European BACnet meeting, held in Dresden, the BIG-EU and the OPC Foundation designed the foundation of their cooperation.
The OPC Foundation is the community for interoperability solutions based on OPC communication specifications that deliver universal connectivity. OPC is the interoperability standard for secure, reliable and platform-independent information exchange. As the official source for the OPC Certification Program, the nonprofit OPC Foundation helps ensure that OPC products plug-and-play in real-world applications. With almost 500 member companies, the OPC Foundation promotes education, awareness and adoption of the OPC specifications through global collaborations.
I had a discussion with Frank Schubert and Matthias Damm about how this might relate to BACnet web services. They explained that the two are very different. BACnet web services provide objects for specific use cases used in building automation. In contrast, the cooperation with the OPC Foundation is providing a means to communicate BACnet information using the OPC UA web services framework enabling integration of industrial and building automation systems.
Both the BACnet and OPC communities have been developing cooperation with other organizations and standards, showing a mature and informed understanding of how to simplify and improve real-world applications in the field. Other industry groups could learn from these cooperation activities. Let’s hope this is a trend.
