Smart Energy, Smart Grid, Smart Building. When it comes to describing the technical and
technological implementation of the energy transition , the
term smart is not far away. This applies in particular to buildings. After all, they play an essential role in making the energy transition
sustainable. But is Smart Building really
more than a play on words? How
does complex become comfortable in intelligently networked building technology? And what does the merger of smart buildings and
smart energy networks look like? I will get to the bottom of these questions in today's episode of the WAGO Energy Tech Talk with my guest
Daniel Wehmeier.
As head of Industry Management
Building Technologies at WAGO, he deals with all topics
relating to building technology. He says: The complexity in buildings is increasing so rapidly that a very complex
situation arises that can only
be solved easily with efficient engineering. Welcome Daniel. I'm glad you're here
and answering our questions. Yes, Heiko, thank you for the invitation. I'm also happy
to be here today. Sounds good, let's get started! We have just mentioned the topic of
smart, smart, smarter, smartest. Just tell me what is meant
by the term "Smart Building"? or maybe even simpler
How would you describe the term "smart"? I would like
to thank you once again for this question. That's the question I think I get asked
the most , and I
almost thought you'd come up with it today, too.
I took a piece of paper with me, to be honest, because
I have to read it over and over again. And by the way, that's the question I always put aside when
someone asks me: What is smart? Then I ask, yes, what do you mean by the word smart? So if you look it up –
I had a podcast the other day and I was able to google it
while we were talking. And that's what I did,
I wrote it down again. So if you enter that into Wikipedia or Google, it
says interactive and autonomous. So that's what
it says under Smart. Now the question is,
what does that mean now? So if a building is smart, i.e.
A smart building, what
does it really mean? And I think if you take this meaning of the word smart and then
mix it with building, it's real and that's where we really come
into the application in the building. That is the question of whether the building actually helps us, i.e.
us as users, you as user. Do you have more work to operate the building or
does the building take care of you? And that is precisely the
question we must ask ourselves. I think this is possible in relation to the user, i.e. all of
us who move towards buildings. On the other hand , I think that also applies to all
the people who have to engineer such a building , i.e. put
it into operation and build it. Do we have more effort
to bring this to life in the first place? Or does the whole thing take care of us too? Sounds easy, but I think
it's quite a complex topic. I think it sounds comfortable in many
ways. So the building takes care of me,
but I think it's rather complex.
And that's, I think, this dichotomy that
's there again. For me that is a contradiction in terms. I don't know how you see it. Yes, that is a contradiction in terms. We have, but today we experience it more frequently in various
elements of our lives. And that is exactly the question, how do
I achieve simplicity, comfort even though it is becoming technologically more complex. We can open a big discussion
about whether we need to de-technique. Do buildings have to be less technical? This is a field that could now be
opened up as a huge discussion. I don't think that's the way to the goal, because we simply have to meet
incredibly big challenges in terms of energy efficiency, but also
in terms of comfort, user expectations that
we now have. And then it quickly becomes complex.
I think we should open up the topic a bit and say, what are the individual components
in a smart building? What are the typical things? Well, so if. If I open up the topic now
and say what are the components of the smart building,
then it becomes very, very complex again, because we have an
incredible number of trades, we have an incredible amount of technology,
but above all we can do it , I think, into the areas, into what the
user really experiences and sees , i.e. the front end, you might
say, I come into a room, the popular hotel room with the arrangement that I spent the two nights where
I'm there, definitely do not understand. Lighting, shading, air conditioning.
Exactly, I have all these topics and I still have a
lot that happens in the background. So how do I actually
generate the energy in the building? Do I have heat pumps, do I get
it from the ground, from the air? Do I have gas or air conditioning? So we have all these things, we have elevator controls. It is unbelievable
how much is built into such a building.
For me, these are actually
quite big challenges to make it easier again. It's always about simplifying these complex things like you mentioned
. We just mentioned that.
We now have lighting, shading, elevators, maybe
with the generation of energy, that's more my issue,
where I come from, that we can also manage this networking between smart grid or
smart energy and smart building. Maybe we'll take it
a step further now
to perhaps shed some light on these interfaces.
What are these things that it
takes to become smart? Well, I said yes, in principle the building
that takes care of the user is smart first and foremost. That means, on the one hand, we have
the interface to the building user, so how will the interface and
we see that everywhere in our lives today, how will the interface to the building user become simpler, that one and
the other is the engineering. So how does the interface to
the one who builds, engineers the building become easier? Our answer is simple – and the complexity behind it
is not decreasing – our answer is that we already offer
very strong ready-made application solutions that contain this complexity. All of these things that you have to think about, however, include offering those who
engineer and operate it a relatively simple interface in the form of
a web interface, where many decisions have already been made, but
freedom is still not lost. I think that's something like how we can
approach this incredibly high level of complexity and still keep the individual
character of each building, because I think that's, that
's also important, on the other hand, but the 80% that is are standardized , have nevertheless already taken care of.
Sounds like the modular system to me.
