HVAC Integration
HVAC Integration
Service Intro
What is HVAC Integration
HVAC stands for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. This system provides heating and cooling to residential and commercial buildings. You can find HVAC systems anywhere from single-family homes to submarines where they provide the means for environmental comfort. Becoming more and more popular in new construction, these systems use fresh air from outdoors to provide high indoor air quality. The V in HVAC, or ventilation, is the process of replacing or exchanging air within a space. This provides a better quality of air indoors and involves the removal of moisture, smoke, odors, heat, dust, airborne bacteria, carbon dioxide, and other gases as well as temperature control and oxygen replenishment.
How Does An HVAC System Work
The three main functions of an HVAC system are interrelated, especially when providing acceptable indoor air quality and thermal comfort. Your heating and air conditioning system is often one of the most complicated and extensive systems in your home, but when it stops working you’ll know soon enough! There are nine parts to your HVAC system that you should be familiar with the air return, filter, exhaust outlets, ducts, electrical elements, outdoor unit, compressor, coils and blower.
HVAC Integration The Past
When the first air conditioning systems came in, they were simple mechanical “machines”, with very few electrical components, just for making it work. There were no options for external control/integration. The only way of controlling them was by “cutting” off the HVAC unit power. Therefore, the only way to integrate HVAC systems was by adding a controllable (on/off) relay on the power supply line to the HVAC unit.
Later on, small split systems that entered the markets brought in a new control capability – the IR. Similar to TVs, Home Automation controllers “learned” the codes and started controlling those small split systems by their own IR transmitters, as an alternative to the original HVAC remote. Of course, it wasn’t ideal, since it was “one-way” integration, but it was much better than nothing those days.
The communicating thermostats that became very popular provided additional integration options, but they were mainly used as a stand-alone solution.
HVAC Integration The Present
Today, with the penetration of the inverter type HVAC systems to the world markets, the situation has dramatically changed: On one hand, the existing solutions (power line cut off and communicating thermostats) became irrelevant as an integration option.
On the other hand, inverter operation requires much more complex control components, which also enable getting all control and monitoring relevant data via communication channels. This opens both a great opportunity and huge challenge for integration.
Opportunity – since all the data is “digitized”, as the different components in the HVAC system “communicate” via proprietary protocols, we should be able to access multiple system parameters and options such as: temperature sensor readings, operation status, operation mode, EV (electronic expansion valve) position, compressor status, etc.
Challenge – all this data is “internal”, inside the system, as those communication protocols are proprietary for each HVAC manufacturer, making them closed for 3rd party integration . In some cases, HVAC manufacturers provide “gateways”, but they fulfill the whole variety of requirements, coming from the “automation” side. There is no industry-wide standard for communication.
