10. Smart Buildings and Grid Distribution Management

This text is an introduction to two specific applications that apply smart building technology and smart grid distribution to a general campus of buildings. The example deployments are at pilot level for the campus and at a single building level. The applications are targeted at managing and improving the electrical demand and energy efficiency of the locations while minimizing the cost of the electrical energy from the electrical supplier. The application also maximizes renewable and conventional distributed generation and storage at both the building level and at the campus level while minimizing any usage impact to the campus or building operator. As a part of this chapter, the general smart building and campus building applications will be discussed in detail. In addition to the software and hardware applications, the financial cost structure of successfully researching, developing, and deploying production smart building systems using IoT will be covered. The economics must recognize the impacts of utilities venturing into alternative rate structure schemes which could be a movement away from volumetric pricing. The market acceptance of technology is moving into a mature stage and this will need to be included in the business model.