9. Describe the market readiness and potential transition path for this technology to reach wide-scale commercialization or broad-based adoption, if the technology is already commercially available.
Consider providing details regarding: (1) the types of buildings and end-users (e.g., operations and maintenance, design and engineering or facility managers) that may adopt this technology and (2) whether any government, university or other standards-establishing organization has tested this technology. If so, succinctly summarize the findings and performance. (Limit 2500 characters)
Government, universities and industry have effectively implemented Drupal and BACnet systems for many years. Market readiness and potential transition path for the Open Energy paradigm can be illustrated by considering two high profile sites, The White House and Penn State University.
The White House web site[i] is constructed using the Drupal. Several years ago renovations to the White House took place during which time the WebCTRL product by Automated Logic was installed. This BACnet front end enables a select few users to access the HVAC upgrades that occurred at the time for monitoring and control purposes.
Likewise the Penn State web site (www.psu.edu) as many other university sites, also uses Drupal. In August of 2010 Penn State received a research grant of $159 million from federal and state sources to develop ways to make buildings more energy efficient. This was the largest grant received in Penn State's history. Penn State was also an early adopter of BACnet and has one of the largest BACnet systems in the world. The WebCTRL product by ALC is also in use at Penn State.
The White House and Penn State both have a demonstrated interest in the solar industry. In May 2014 the White House installed solar panels on its roof, and somewhere on its web site can be found a video documenting that installation. In Oct 2014 the Penn State Class of 2015, following The White House lead, voted green with a Solar Panel Array chosen as the class gift to Penn State. Both these stories were front-page news on the day of the announcement, but now can be found by only a dedicated search on each web site.
Professionals responsible for the design and engineering of both solar projects, by simply specifying the electrical monitoring component of the solar arrays to be BACnet compliant could easily integrate the solar system into the existing BACnet system. Operations and maintenance personnel would view the new systems in a similar manner to those they are already familiar with. Facility managers could then coordinate with Information Technology offices responsible for the Drupal Web Sites. The IT web developers could then download the BACnet module for Drupal for free from Drupal.org and quickly setup displays of real-time dynamic data from the solar panels as energy dashboard type blocks anywhere on the existing Drupal sites.