The SSPC's Utilities Integration Working Group has, for years, been engaging utility companies and working with national labs on grid-related technologies such as real-time pricing and automated demand response. This working group is well positioned to lead BACnet's efforts as the nation works toward the creation of an interoperable Smart Grid. With this new responsibility, the group is being re-chartered as the Smart Grid Working Group (SG-WG). The convener of the SG-WG is also the leader of NIST's Building to Grid (B2G) Domain Expert Working Group, and the SSPC expects to continue to work closely with NIST, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and other public and private industry organizations as the working group expands its focus to include all aspects of Smart Grid, which reaches not only outward to the utilities but also inward to buildings and homes.

Aiding this effort is an update to BACnet's network security specifications. After four public review cycles, the SSPC finally recommended for publication Addendum-135-2008g. This addendum adds state-of-the-art digital signatures and encryption (SHA-256/HMAC and AES) to enable the creation of FIPS-compliant secure communications. This technology will be available on all BACnet media types and joins the capabilities of the certificate-based SSL/TLS that can be employed when using BACnet Web Services (BACnet/WS). Together, these technologies will serve the high security needs of the Smart Grid initiatives.

BACnet has been communicating on standard IP networks for more than ten years now. To ensure that BACnet continues to integrate well into corporate infrastructures and to expand it into the emerging market areas enabled by ubiquitous IP networking, the committee has formed a new working group to investigate the opportunities for adopting more key capabilities and best practices from the Information Technology industry. This group will be working to facilitate the continued convergence of the IT and Building Automation infrastructures.

Also at this meeting the committee advanced ten addenda to final publication stage, created four new addenda for first public review, and revised six addenda for additional public review. See the Addenda link for more details.

With theses activities, BACnet is showing its key strengths. It is both a mature technology and an ever-changing one. Driven by an open consensus-driven industry effort, BACnet always adapts to changing needs without losing the stable core that has ensured interoperability since 1995.

The first part of the training course, conducted by Frank, covers the BACnet Data Link Layers, Objects and Services, Alarming, Scheduling, Trending and Device- and Network management as well as functional specifications for projects to achieve the best possible interoperability (PICS, BIBBS and Device Profiles). The second part of the course (specifying BACnet projects) is presented by Hans and is based on the German translation of NISTIR 6392 ("GSA Guide to Specifying Interoperable Building Automation and Control Systems Using ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135-1995") with additions related to the latest revisions of BACnet and the specifics of European laws and regulations.

The three-day BIG-EU event, from April 22 to 24, is intended to facilitate interoperation of BACnet products and conformance to the BACnet standard.

The 2009 BIG-EU Plugfest promotes the further improvement of BACnet devices' interoperability by bringing together some 30 manufacturers or vendors of a multitude of BACnet devices. The number of European and U.S. BACnet specialists, developers and engineers is expected to exceed 60. The Plugfest offers the participants an excellent forum for testing individual products and new functionalities with each other in a multi-vendor environment. The event also gives the participating companies the chance to obtain the latest information on the BACnet standard and conformance testing, ensuring that the members of the BACnet community are all working together towards a harmonized protocol.

"The BACnet protocol is dynamic and under continuous development. This generates challenges for developers of BACnet devices but, above all, opens up exciting new opportunities for creating innovative products and solutions in building automation. The BACnet community is open and the community's joint objective is to create awareness of BACnet and develop even more user-friendly products ," explains Teemu Heikkilä, one of ABB's BACnet experts.

For complete information about the Plugfest, including a registration form, please click here.

Some exciting news from Russia. The BACnet Interest Group - Russia (BIG-RU) was recently asked by the Moscow State Construction University to prepare a BACnet training course at the university which will become a required part of the curriculum. "We estimate that at least 100 students will go through the course every year, and we expect that at least 50 of those will go into the industry experienced with BACnet," said Andrey Golovin, leader of the BIG-RU.

BACnet is also very active in Japan. "The Green project of the graduate school/Faculty of the University of Tokyo will establish an intelligent facility management system with advanced ICT technologies , and is planning an integrated BACS to research how to reduce energy consumption to 30% by 2012 and 50% by 2030 at the University of Tokyo," reported Takeji Toyoda, liaison to the BACnet committee from the Institute of Electrical Installation Engineers of Japan (IEIEJ).

An important unification of testing methods will be forthcoming now that BACnet International's BACnet Testing Labs and BACnet Interest Group - Europe (BIG-EU)'s TGTC have created a common working group. They will be producing a single testing procedure, based on the tests in ASHRAE 135.1-2007, which both labs will work from in the future.

After an extended period to allow for some actual implementations to be prototyped, the BACnet Network Security architecture will be going out for its fourth public review as Addendum g, bringing state-of-the-art digital signatures and encryption to BACnet, enabling security-critical applications to use a standard protocol.

Developed in collaboration with the IEIEJ, the Global Group Object will be going out for its second public review in Addendum p. This extends the concept of the Group Object to monitor and report on changes in data collected from multiple external devices.

An enhanced Lighting Output Object will begin its third public review in Addendum i, and a few additions made to the XML Data Formats will cause it to go out for its second public review in Addendum t.

A new set of "Value Objects", proposed in Addendum w, complete the data representation capabilities of BACnet. New objects like String Value Object, and Unsigned Value Object, enable more opportunities to present data in a standard, rather than proprietary, manner. In addition, the new Time Value Object enables the definition of an extension to BACnet scheduling for non-absolute times, allowing schedules to reference calculated times like sunrise/sunset.