Under control Saia-Burgess Controls

UNDER CONTROL

The Swiss company Saia-Burgess Controls manufactures electronic components for the automatic control of infrastructure systems such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Joseph Altham interviewed Patrick Marti, the director of corporate cales at Saia-Burgess Controls, to find out how the company’s control systems are helping organisations to lower their energy consumption.

Saia-Burgess Controls describes itself as a PLC company. PLC stands for programmable logic controllers, components that are used to control for instance HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) inside a building. The company was founded in 1920 and originally made timer switches for such applications as staircase lighting. Earlier, its switching devices employed electric motors but in the mid 1970s Saia Burgess pioneered the development of electronic PLCs. “The motors and switches were replaced by electronics and became programmable,” said Mr Marti. “A PLC is a unit on which you can program defined behaviour. It operates on the basis of the signals it receives from outside to carry out the actions you require. For example, a PLC in an air conditioning unit will record values from temperature, humidity and air quality sensors and will then decide how and whether the air conditioning needs to be switched on or not to reach the required air qualities.”

Big projects

Room control is one of the simplest applications of the Saia PLCs. On a much larger scale, Saia’s programmable devices are used to manage conditions in numerous infrastructures like buildings, warehouses, district heating, water treatment, on board ships and inside tunnels. For infrastructure automation, it is vital to employ programmable control devices that are durable and reliable and Saia’s products are designed to last between 18 and 25 years. In big projects, like the Lötschberg tunnel under the Alps, Saia’s PLCs control and monitor many different processes.

“A large tunnel is really the sum of many applications, from lighting and ventilation, CO2 monitoring, emergency lighting, fire detection and alarming to traffic control systems and radio network, that all have to be permanently monitored and controlled. Our programmable devices manage all these applications with ease, from controls to communication and visualisation. As the tunnel is 35 kilometres long, you can see why our customers need their investment to last at least 15 years without any problems.”

PLCs for the digital age

Saia’s PCD range of control devices can be connected to a personal computer and the information they hold can be viewed online. In general, connecting a PLC to the web makes the equipment easier and more accessible to

control, as Patrick Marti explained. “In today’s automation environment, the user needs to interact with the tools he has and knows – to modify the room temperature without being either a heating engineer or a programming specialist. So users often need to interact with the automation devices from a PC. For example, thanks to the integral web-servers in all controllers, the person at hotel lobby is able to view the particular status of any room personally and in case of questions from the guest, he can immediately interact with the room and if necessary adjust the air conditioning for the guest.”

Saia Burgess even offers automatic control devices equipped with a web-based touch panel that displays the information on screen. These devices help housekeeping staff in hotels and apartment blocks to control a building’s electricity and central heating. “A typical user of our web-based panels might be a janitor in an apartment block who needs to monitor the functioning of the building. The panel lets him get information directly on the cabinet, making it easier for him to operate the installation.” Even if PLCs are designed to communicate with computers, a PC cannot serve as a substitute for a PLC. “The function of a PLC is to control the application. It must operate in a stable, reliable way over decades. Maintaining PC and upgrading the software over that period of time is by far too expensive for professional applications. Saia PLCs give you the necessary stability and robustness for your controls tasks but also let you access the data using your own IT.”

In regions with aging population, it gets harder to hire enough technical skilled people. In parallel, automation gets more complex to cope with ever increasing legal, safety and comfort expectations. And energy saving is not anymore just wishful, it becomes compulsory.

For this reason, Saia includes all the data storage and interfacing right into the controller, to make sure that all data necessary to operate properly a process are available for anybody with the tools – office - ERP – Internet Explorer.

Saving energy

When the data can be viewed on a PC, it can also be recorded and analysed. “People need to be able to exchange data easily without the aid of specialised software. Data in Saia controls systems are stored in Excel format and can be accessed from anywhere. This means that all you energy consumption data are always accessible from anywhere. The system is even able to send you a mail on demand with all the data. This makes the data easy to exploit.” Data capture has an important role to play in lowering energy consumption. “In addition to the fact that you need data to influence the behaviour on energy consumption, it provides valuable information to base an investment case or to deliver a diagnostic about an installation. With a ventilation system, for example, you can monitor how much power the fan is consuming. As the power consumption of the motor fan depends on the airflow, dirty air filters increase the energy consumption. Likewise, with pumps, data on the electricity consumption can indicate a malfunction.” In today’s world, organisations need to pay much greater attention to the amount of energy they use and Saia’s technology can make a unique contribution to improving energy efficiency by delivering easily the right data to the right person.

“People are naturally sensitive to the cost of energy and the regulations are making it obligatory for new designs to be built in a way that enables energy use to be monitored. In Germany, especially, the government wants to adopt energy-saving policies so Germany is likely to be a growing market for us in the future.” n