About Tamalee Basu
I am an undergraduate architecture student, immensely curious about my profession.
StudentBuilding Management system or BMS is a common energy saving technique that is used recently for increasing the energy efficiency of buildings. However, it requires the use of sensors, and other equipment which itself consumes some additional energy. I think, the problem at hand, to control the energy use, is to be viewed more strictly. Imagine the rate of climate change of earth to be increased a million times faster. All people of earth have come to know that because of prolonged excess energy use , due to excess carbon emission, the planet will be destroyed in a week. People would desperately stop using all environmentally harmful actions in that last week as a last attempt to save themselves.
Just like a fuse blows out when there is too much electricity, I think the approach to managing building energy consumption should be same, i.e., we have to set some definite fixed energy consumption levels which if exceeded, the BMS should be programmed in such a way the power will be cut off to maintain the designed energy consumption level. This should be done according to a priority basis. Equipment without which an user can manage should be given least priority while certain equipment without which the functionality of building is hampered (for e.g. refrigeration in a pathology lab) should have the highest priority. In a hot summer , in a residential building, if the air conditioning is used too much and the carbon emissions are very close to the designed levels the BMS should automatically give a warning and switch off lesser important consumption sources like dishwasher, or a washing machine (when there is already a secondary alternative to completing the function) . This kind of a system should be made mandatory to all citizens and while paying the electricity bills, it should become a legal offence if a consumer does not show his carbon consumption details (generated by this system). This kind of a scrutiny will disclose any form of insensitive and irresponsible energy consumption pattern of users.
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