Practical and low-cost monitoring tool for building energy management systems using virtual instrumentation

Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS) have been acquiring greater importance in the world; nowadays are a novel trend, especially for building performance, electricity cost and carbon footprint. Actually, tools for BEMS present some technical and economical disadvantages for building managers; to overcome these limitations, a practical and cost-effective tool is presented. To achieve this, we propose a flexible, user-friendly and low-cost remote monitoring system called Virtual Energy Management System (VMS). This tool is based on virtual instrumentation and the graphical user interface is developed on the LabVIEW 2013® virtual programming platform. VMS displays and records on a computer the information of electrical parameters, electricity costs and carbon footprint; moreover, the user is allowed to visualize the monitoring display and access to records remotely through the internet. The VMS software was designed to be used by employees and building managers, so specialized personnel is not required. The validation was carried out in a building actually in use by the Autonomous University of the State of Baja California (UABC) located at Mexicali, Mexico. Results show that the total investment cost of a monitoring tool for BEMS can be reduced by 40% for small and medium buildings.