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June 2008 PLCs, DCSs & Controllers

Fairlands office development in Randburg is being built to house WesBank and certain other FNB consumer divisions. Comprising two levels of 64 000 square meters the structure houses a 1600-car super basement, two separate office buildings of three floors, a shared facilities building and related external and site works.

According to Richard Angus, COO of FNB Home Loans, one of the divisions that will occupy the building, this is an example of best-of-breed environmentally friendly development. This commitment began with the digging of the foundations for the project. "It took a year to dig the foundations but soil was not moved from the site. Instead it was dispersed around the site and used in some of the landscaping. We also had an onsite concrete batching plant, which meant that trucks were making shorter trips and using less fuel," says Angus.

Internally several measures have been taken to ensure that on completion the building will be highly energy efficient. The lighting management has been fully automated using Beckhoff Building Automation products. The contractors involved were: Claassen Auret Incorporated, the project consulting engineers; A to Z Electrical, the main electrical contractor and Systems Automation & Management (SAM), the system integrator responsible for lighting control in the building.

Control architecture

24 Beckhoff CX9000 Embedded PCs manage the entire digital addressable lighting interface (DALI) through 150 KL6811 DALI master terminals. The goal was to ensure code re-usability and flexibility that would allow changes to the building design to be accommodated easily, thus maximising the energy efficiency of the entire system.

A to Z Electrical implemented an effective cabling and DALI wiring structure, which simplified fault-finding, addressing and grouping of lights in sections. This allowed SAM to create an auto-addressing TwinCAT program to handle the DALI addressing of the system. The control software required very little other user configuration. Throughout the facility presentation and meeting and rooms are controlled via EnOcean switching technology. Beckhoff KL6023 terminals interpret the wireless switching signals used to generate and control the selected lighting scenario required in each room. The presentation rooms also allow for integration with the audio visual (AV) solutions, which ensure the lights adapt automatically to the selected AV mode. In the shared facilities area, large function venues can be split into separately controlled lighting zones or joined together to form one large zone. In the joined mode the EnOcean switches achieve system control through parallel operation. In separate zone mode, the switches are used to control only their pre-allocated areas.

Light management in the open office areas has been implemented using time, presence and occupancy information - no external switches have been installed. Beckhoff SmartSpot sensors detect presence and occupancy in all open areas and are connected straight onto the DALI bus, from which they are also powered. (Approximately 800 have been used throughout the building.) The sensors are read directly by TwinCAT and the information is used to switch lights on or off, as well as to regulate the light output in order to create pleasant ambient lighting conditions at maximum energy efficiency.

Credit(s)

Tel:	+27 11 795 2898
Email:	[email protected]
www:	www.beckhoff.com
Articles:	More information and articles about Beckhoff Automation

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FNB banks on Beckhoff

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