Smart Buildings Technology Podcast

EV Charging Station Infrastructure for Smart Buildings

For this episode of the Smart Buildings Technology Podcast, senior editor Matt Vincent sat down with Andrew Blauvelt, senior product director with Acuity Brands’ Atrius unit, with a focus on sustainability, ESG, IoT, SaaS, and energy technologies; and Chris Vintinner, product line manager with Distech Controls. 
Andrew Blauvelt is the Senior Director of Product at Acuity Brands for the Atrius Intelligent Spaces group, who works with building owners, operators, consultants and systems integrator to help provide an integration IoT platform which aggregates, normalizes and benchmarks all building related data to help achieve sustainability goals. Blauvelt believes transparency and collaboration are the key to unlocking sustainable buildings which close the loop the between owners and occupiers. He has a strong background in building science, starting in high school as building automation technician, working as an energy engineer for AECOM (Sieben Energy Associates), managing business development for Siemens in Energy Services and analytics, and finally helping to design a seamless edge to cloud experience at Acuity Brands. He holds a Bachelors degree in Physics from Albion College, a Bachelors in Materials Science & Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a Masters in Energy Engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Chris Vintinner has worked in product management and sales support with intelligent business specialist Distech Controls since 2017. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Clarkson University. In his LinkedIn bio statement, Vintinner states, "Most buildings aren't broken, but they aren't working as well as they should be. I find ways to increase comfort, decrease energy consumption and reduce operating costs. I make buildings work." 
Drawing on Blauvelt and Vintinner’s expert insights, the podcast discussion investigates the latest trends and technologies for the deployment and maintenance of EV charging station infrastructure for smart buildings.
Questions from SBT addressed during the talk include the following:
* What are the main challenges for integrating EV charging infrastructure into a smart building, in terms of BMS/BAS?* How does integration and use of EV charging infrastructure affect a building’s energy costs?* What's required for smooth integration of EV charging infrastructure both into the power grid and a building’s IT/OT system? * How does a building’s electrical grid interaction change when an EV system is installed, with regard to monitoring and reporting?* How much cabling, connectivity, electrical and networking hardware is involved in installing and maintaining EV systems? * Who usually installs the EV system and who maintains it? * What makes for a good EV charging station location?* What types of EV charging stations can be installed?* What site design factors affect the installation cost of EV infrastructure?* Are DC fast charging stations optimal if they don't handle hybrid vehicles?* What's the breakdown for capex and opex for buildings installing EV charging infrastructure? * How much in-person tech staff is required to maintain these systems?
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What Industry 4.0 and AI portends for ICT in smart buildings

For this edition of The Smart Buildings Technology Podcast, we repackage a far-reaching interview with Kam Patel, director of hyperscale and service provider data center solutions for global communications network infrastructure specialist CommScope. The interview was recently conducted by SBT's sibling publication in Endeavor Business Media, Cabling Installation & Maintenance, for an episode of its Cabling Podcast. 
Patel has been with CommScope for more than 20 years in a variety of business development, engineering, marketing, operations, product management and strategy roles, and is the author of numerous articles, white papers, and presentations on the design of telecommunications and data networks. He holds more than 20 patents for network equipment.
The podcast begins by senior editor Matt Vincent referencing Patel and CommScope's technology-inclusive vision for Industry 4.0 as laid out in a recent industry blog, where Patel writes:
"Whereas the three preceding industry disruptions focused on making the production process faster and more efficient, the fourth Industrial Revolution is about connecting people, information and processes. As such, it has the potential to radically alter not just the business of manufacturing, but how enterprises of all kinds operate.... Whereas the third Industrial Revolution was defined by widespread digitalization (the rise of computers, process logic controllers, etc.), the fourth Industrial Revolution is all about fusing digital, physical and virtual resources to create intelligent processes that think, do and respond faster and more accurately than humans alone can.  The fourth Industrial Revolution is a way of describing the blurring of boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. It’s a fusion of advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, IoT, 3D printing, genetic engineering, quantum computing, and other technologies."
In the course of the interview, Patel is asked to address how this thesis expands the outlook for ICT technicians on the ground integrating Industry 4.0 and A.I. systems technologies in plant manufacturing networks, and also within commercial enterprises and smart buildings.
In response, Patel emphasizes how, "With Industry 4.0, if we combine all the things that we're talking about such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things, quantum computing, etc. -- it allows machines to be able to talk to machines." He continued, "Machines talking and A.I., all such things are highly latency dependent. Communications between machines and robotics are highly latency driven."
Later, Patel discusses what cloud computing does to "enable industry 4.0 in a more meaningful way," and addresses the apportioning of wired technologies such as Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) vs. wireless technologies such as 5G in Industry 4.0 deployments. 
"5G has come around, and that's certainly a low latency application," notes Patel, while adding, "One 5G application is for cell phones [and] it's not the best application. What 5G was really designed for was capacity and latency."

ESG Introspection with Green Badger’s Tommy Linstroth

For this episode of the SBT Podcast, we welcome back Green Badger CEO Tommy Linstroth. 
As stated in his biography page on the USGBC website: "Tommy Linstroth’s career has spanned the private, academic, and non-profit sectors in the Midwest, West and now East coast, where he is the Principal of Trident Sustainability Group – a triple bottom line consultancy firm and CEO of Green Badger, a cutting-edge sustainability software company. To date, Linstroth has personally been involved with over 60 projects achieving LEED certification, with another two dozen underway. These projects include the first building in the Southeast to be both LEED certified and in the National Register of Historic places, the first all-retail LEED shopping center in the nation, the first LEED McDonald’s restaurant, and Sustainable Fellwood, one of the largest green affordable housing developments – part of the LEED for ND pilot program and LEED for Homes program – in the nation. Green Badger is the direct output of his experience with LEED. Green Badger provides a mobile solution to LEED construction documentation and allows for easy management of construction waste, sustainable materials tracking, erosion and indoor air quality reporting, and managing low-VOC [volatile organic compounds] products – including a bar code scanner that gives real time VOC information." 
For SBT's second sit down with Linstroth, we wanted to pinpoint his perspective on a specific set of question related to matters of ESG, or environmental, social and governance, compliance. Questions included the following: For contractors and for property owners/managers, what does ESG really mean? How can gathering stats and data on ESG be used to inform change for different types of organizations? What are the most important ESG metrics, and how can they help propel positive outcomes? What is the value of tracking ESG metrics, in terms of asking probing questions that can lead companies to new processes, automations, use-cases, and efficiencies? And finally, what are your predictions for ESG developments this year?

The Marriage of Security Technology and Connectivity

The marriage between today’s security technology and connectivity provides service, and relevant and future ready access solutions.
Security technology can intersect with property management platforms and also operate in isolation (independent from a property’s operating systems). Today’s multihousing properties offer an excellent model for best practices in the security technology and connectivity relationship.
The keys to success include:
A comprehensive understanding of the level and location security is needed
Budget parameters
A modular approach that meets current needs and is future ready to accept new technology
Understanding the Access and Connectivity link
Navigating hardware expectations for full solution provision
Ancillary opportunities to leverage manufacturing for additional services
Expectation on implementation – the devil is in the details (or the certification)

Tommy Linstroth, Green Badger

Tommy Linstroth is founder and CEO of Green Badger, one of the nation's leading SaaS developers for managing sustainable construction of smart buildings. 
Green Badger takes as its mandate the process of accelerating environmentally responsible construction worldwide by equipping the building industry with affordable technology, and the knowledge to automate and easily report LEED compliance and ESG metrics. 
Pairing its comprehensive, user-friendly software with powerful data analytics and customer support, Green Badger's SaaS stands to save project teams hundreds of hours per project, and helps to ensure that sustainability goals are met. 
Questions from Smart Buildings Technology senior editor Matt Vincent for Green Badger's Tommy Linstroth included the following:
* What are smart buildings deployments today requiring of the actual project construction teams? 
* What some emerging best practices members of the construction industry are starting to use to ensure good reporting for smart buildings?
* How are ESG requirements specifically impacting the construction industry? 
* How do ESG requirements differ for different types of intelligent sites?
* What are the main LEED documentation challenges for green building design?

Dru Crawley, Father of EnergyPlus, on Predicting Smart Buildings 40 Years Ago

Dru Crawley has long championed the promise of integrated building systems—essentially anything that may be labeled today as “smart.” If your work or research relates to sustainable design, energy modeling, or net-zero buildings, you probably are familiar with technology that Crawley helped originate and develop: EnergyPlus, the U.S. Department of Energy’s open-source energy simulation program that serves as the engine for many modeling platforms. During his multidecade career at the DOE, he also oversaw the Commercial Building Initiative, now known as the Better Buildings Initiative.
Today, Crawley is a Bentley Fellow and the director of building performance research at the engineering infrastructure software company Bentley Systems. Based in Washington, D.C., he is also active on the ASHRAE board.
In this episode of the Smart Buildings Technology podcast, Crawley reflects on the state of the smart building industry, how his decades-old predictions have panned out, and the obstacles hindering our path to a smarter future.
Crawley has written more than 125 papers and articles on building energy efficiency, sustainability, and renewable energy, but the two referenced in this episode are linked below:
“Commercial Building Systems Integration Research,” by Carol M. Gardner and Drury B. Crawley, American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, 1988.
“Developing a Roadmap to the 21st Century for Commercial Buildings,” by Drury B. Crawley, U.S. Department of Energy, 2001.

Interview: Kathy Hannun, Dandelion Energy

Kathy Hannun is the inventor and engineer behind the renewable energy appliance provider, Dandelion Energy, which deals in underground, geothermal-sourced heating and cooling systems.
The Dandelion Energy geothermal platform is sleekly deployed 10 feet below a structure and significantly cuts cost and reliance on oil and traditional AC systems, as well as carbon emissions. In February 2021, Dandelion Energy announced it had raised an additional $30 million with Bill Gates’ venture capital firm.
Having been featured on television shows such as "This Old House" and "Designing Spaces," Hannun also recently gave a TED Talk entitled, “How to Heat Your Home Without Warming the Planet."
SBT spoke with Hannun about geothermal energy for residential and commercial uses in North America, and trends globally as structures from schools to hospitals and residences including MDU/MTUs, and commercial buildings prepare for high heating and cooling costs in the face of climate change.

Interview: Veeral Hardev, Ubiquitous Energy

Smart Buildings Technology (SBT) sat down with Veeral Hardev, VP of Strategy for Ubiquitous Energy, a specialist in transparent solar harvesting technology for use with architectural glass in commercial and institutional smart buildings, who this month announced its closing of a $30 million Series B funding round.
Our podcast talk ranges from the company's background, to its outlook for industry partnerships, and technology lifecycle and deployment questions. The discussion drills down on topics of BMS communications, energy savings, decarbonization, the difference between electrochromic and photovoltaic technologies, and other areas of note within the intelligent buildings segment.

Interview: Tina D’Agostin, Alcatraz AI

Alcatraz AI CEO Tina D'Agostin recently sat down with SBT to discuss the company's flagship touchless access control technology, the Rock, in the context of the larger physical security market for smart buildings heading into 2022.
In this startup edition of the Smart Buildings Technology podcast, SBT senior editor Matt Vincent sits down with Alcatraz AI CEO Tina D'Agostin to discuss the company's flagship "hardware as a service" access control technology, the Rock, which transforms building security by leveraging artificial intelligence and analytics capabilities to make powerful decisions at "the edge," where an individual's face becomes the key security credential.
The proprietary technology is discussed in the context of the larger physical access control technology market for smart buildings heading into 2022.