April 2004 : Newsletter

Global Integration

Providing innovative building system integration solutions puts EnFlex products in contact with most of the legacy control systems in use today. The inherent flexibility of EnFlex provides our customers with the power to exclusively use EnFlex or to use EnFlex in combination with other open, or even proprietary, software and hardware. EnFlex products provide numerous options to update facilities from proprietary PC or microcontroller based control systems to state-of-the-art, web-enabled, facility management systems—all with the legacy control system remaining in place.

Best Regards,
Gerry and David

Barber-Colman → EnFlex → BACnet

Situated in the heart of Atlanta, the CNN building is the home of Turner Broadcasting and the CNN Telecommunications Corporation. Originally constructed as the Omni International Complex, a multi-use facility that offered a European-style hotel, fine shops, restaurants, and two 14-story office towers., the complex was renamed CNN Center in September 1986 when it became the world headquarters for TBS, Inc. and CNN. Today, CNN Center is a part of Turner Properties which manages over 1.35 million square feet of commercial property in the Atlanta area.

Turner Properties engineers needed to transition their legacy Barber Coleman Network 8000 energy management system into a network accessible system. The preferred method for this requires the implementation of an open standard such as BACnet. Tekplan Solutions, working with Turner engineers, used EnFlex G-100 Control Servers programmed with both an EnFlex Barber-Colman driver and the BACnet Driver and Server as the basis for the new system. Each G-100 connects to one or more Barber-Colman GCM controllers and effectively makes the units network accessible. The mature system requires that the G-100’s and their user interface software cohesively manage a total of over 14,000 control and monitoring points. Each G-100 converts GCM read/write points to BACnet points which are then made available to a Delta BACnet user interface as shown below.

The benefits of this type of retrofit abound for both the system integrator and the end user:

• Improved, flexible User Interface.
• Improved remote access to enable Tekplan to better maintain systems.
• Rapid identification and correction of system problems.
• Ability to respond rapidly to needed EMS programming changes.
• Development of a flexible and clear standard for future planning.

Tekplan Solutions of Atlanta now has a new customer that was previously “locked-in� to use and maintain an outdated, proprietary system. Tekplan has since secured additional work with this customer due to Tekplan’s exceptional performance on this BACnet upgrade.