6. What is the value proposition of this technology?
Identify the current approach (if one exists) to address the problem and discuss the shortcomings. Discuss the benefits of this technology. Benefits may include energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, energy costs, operations and maintenance, and user satisfaction. Clearly outline assumptions and methodology for deriving quantitative benefits. Qualitative descriptions of benefits must be aligned to GSA’s strategic sustainability goals. (Limit 2500 characters)
Open Energy relies on two proven technologies, BACnet and Drupal that are commonly used in facilities around the world today. The energy dashboard concept is not new. Those who have tried them complain about strict hosting requirements, costs and the time it takes to use them. Open Energy dashboards are different because they can be hosted anywhere, they are free, and can be deployed directly into an institutions existing public or private websites. Both are open, scalable, secure and free.
BACnet is open. It was first published in 1995 as an open communication protocol to enable interoperability between building automation devices. Vendors were quick to market with BACnet compliant building automation systems. In 2015 BACnet will be celebrating its twentieth anniversary, and is being celebrated around the world with the BACnet Roadshow.
Drupal is open. It was created over ten years ago and released as open-source software under the GNU Public License. That means it’s completely free to download, use, and modify: There are no purchase, license, or maintenance fees.
BACnet is scalable. BACnet Internationally operates a testing laboratory which certifies manufacture devices for compliance with the BACnet protocol. It has certified devices from over 100 different manufacturers in nine different device categories and has almost 800 companies registered with BACnet vendor IDs. BACnet compliant devices can coexist happily deployed on different equipment on building automation networks in the same building.
Drupal is scalable. It has proven itself repeatedly in the field on sites with over a million pages, and at over 20,000 requests per second. Its core installation handles over 99 percent of use cases, while free optimization tools and a large base of Drupal-trained administrators address the other one percent.
BACnet is secure. From a BACnet Web Services perspective, new RESTful services will provide state of the art security and authorization mechanisms (TLS and OAuth 2.0) with flexible PKI certificate management and provide a capability for fine-grained and extensible authorization schemes.
Drupal is secure. It is used by thousands of high profile web sites and is subject to rigorous security testing both by the Drupal community and by security experts around the world. Drupal's core code has been proven to prevent common security vulnerabilities such as those defined by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP).
And … both are free.