HVAC (heating ventilation and air conditioning) systems consumes nearly 20% of electricity supplied in the world. For companies and public facility organizations, optimizing energy efficiency of HVAC systems is not only a social responsibility, but also a key driver for their endeavor on cost optimization and operational excellence.

HVAC vendors have been relentlessly working hard to optimize the system’s energy efficiency. Conventionally they put almost all effort on improving cold or heat sources. Recent development of IoT and digital technologies, however, created a new way for the HVAC industry to build smart energy management solutions. Such technologies are more oriented to equip the HVAC system with capability of timely and precise perception of fluctuating cooling or heating demand of its serviced space. The system can hence intelligently adjust the cooling or heating output based on such perception. Adopting Bluetooth low energy technologies significantly facilitates HVAC vendors in implementing such new smart solutions.

Challenges

Although traditional HVAC systems boast of some degree of automation, they can hardly perceived conditions such as temperature and humidity of the target space. Even if they are sometimes connected with a few sensors, connections were completed with cables, which make another hassle. From the perspective of the overall system, such sensors are still information silos though.

In aspect of actuators, traditional systems also adopt conventional PC cabling, which is costly in system integration engineering and subject to weathering and rodent after installation.

Traditional HAVC systems adopts cable connected panels for man-machine interaction. It not only makes remote monitoring and controlling a costly effort but also hindered the introduction of artificial intelligence into the arena.

Solution

By embedding Bluetooth low energy modules into sensors, actuators, and control panels, constituents of the HVAC system can agilely weave into an organic web in its serviced space. The modules can forward sensor data such as humidity and temperature northward to the upper device. After data processing, the upper device will work out operating commands. Such command data are also sent via the module to actuators. The status of the HVAC system will be shown to local or remote users via wireless terminals. In this way, it is convenient for users anywhere to monitor and control the HVAC system.

With ultra-long autonomy, Bluetooth-enabled sensors can be flexibly deployed in the HVAC system’s serviced space, ushering in the opportunity of implementing AI applications which require feeding of real-time big data. With a large amount of sensing data uploaded to the host computer and hence to the cloud server, the AI solution provider can is able to train an optimal energy consumption algorithm. By using such ongoing optimizing algorithm, users can enjoy high quality cooling or heating services with the lowest energy consumption.

Real-Time Maintenance

By embedding Bluetooth modules into the HVAC system, the system is able to feedback status data in real-time. When the equipment need encounters status that ask for intervention, upgrading or other maintenance operations, the system can send prompts instantly to a remote site where a mechanism will decide whether human or AI measures are needed.

Conclusion

Although BLE modules are extremely small in size and power consumption, they brought about a great opportunity of upgrading for HVAC systems. Its mass adoption prepared the arena with precondition for implementing complete digitalized intelligence. The Shenzhen RF-star Technology Co., Ltd., a renowned Bluetooth module manufacturer in China, dedicated itself to excellence in technologies of radio frequency and embedded software. It has been enabling quite many top HVAC vendors in the world, i.e. Carrier, Midea and Friedrich, with its Bluetooth technology. The company is extremely proud for being able to support those top ultimate energy consumers in their endeavor for the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goal.