Arc Informatique controls building automation in the Louvre

Summary

April 29, 2014 - Opposite the Louvre Museum, at no.2 Place du Palais-Royal, is an impressive building, which dates back to 1852. It was built on the instructions of Napoleon III and initially used for shops. One must imagine it as an immense shopping center with 52 departments and special counters.  But a century later, in 1975, the fine shops of the Louvre were languishing and a UK investor undertook refurbishment of the building to create the Louvre development of antiques shops. Nowadays, the first two levels (-1 and main floor) of the "Antique Dealers’ Louvre" contains over 250 galleries on 10,000m2, 30 artistic specialities and artifacts from Europe, Asia and the Middle East.  Six upper floors are dedicated to the business center called "Le Louvre des Entreprises" (the Business Louvre) which has hosted prestigious tenants since 1990, including the Ministry of Finance, the U.S. Embassy and the Banque de France. The current situation SFL, a real-estate company based in Lyon, is the owner of the building. Having undertaken extensive renovation work and fitting-out for office space, the company wished to establish an efficient supervisory system to improve utilization and control of the 37,000m2 of available floor space. The project management was entrusted to Esopeand the company Apilog Automation took charge of the BMS package.   The works thus include some for "Business Louvre" alone and common equipment and supplies for it and the "Antique Dealers’ Louvre.” The project The PcVue supervision monitors the following LonWorks equipment:

• France Energie heat pumps with KARNO OEM regulators. In all, 1,200 heap pumps will be monitored.
• Lighting with ACELIA infrared multi-sensor modules.
• Blinds with ACELIA modules for 230V motors.
• THERMOKON remote controls for centralized control of heat pumps, lighting and blinds.
• Data acquisition from divisional panels on several levels, via Jphnson Controls FX15 PLCs.  

The above facilities use LonWorks technology and are complemented by:

• Supply equipment: electronic concentrators, substations for regulation and distribution, now controlled via TREND IP devices.
• All of the tenants' meters and the central low-tension boards: data from around 250 meters on Modbus are processed and analyzed in PcVue. A TSX PLC enables management of the backup supply (G.E).

Eventually this project will comprise over 2,500 LonWorks nodes.  

The BMS architecture mainly consists of:

• 36 Loytec L-INX servers.
• 3 PcVue supervisory stations with WebVue thin-client access via Internet/intranet.
• NL Facilities from Newron System using the Monitoring and Zoning version for surveillance and subdivision of areas.

Benefits

• Together with PcVue's flexibility and advanced technology, Apilog Automation  has been able to achieve open-systems integration of hardware and software.
• The solution provides for managing all of the building's equipment and for acting quickly in emergency.
• Easy-to-use, effective behavior that provides quick control of each area plus dynamic reconfiguration.
• Management and optimization of energy consumption render this reference application complete.
• The expected energy savings are in the order of 20% to 30%.