BACnet standard improves alarm handling

Changes to the newly published BACnet standard from ASHRAE will encourage smart lighting controls and other building automation control systems.

March 15, 2013

ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135-2012, BACnet – A Data Communication Protocol for Building Automation and Control Networks, allows building equipment and systems manufactured by different companies to work together.

The new standard is being published due to the wide-reaching changes in alarming functionality made by addendum af to Standard 135-2010. This edition of the standard also includes recently adopted changes for the lighting industry.

Addendum af provides improvements to alarm handling in BACnet including: Improved fault handling, temporary alarm recipient subscriptions, improvements in scalability of alarm distribution and simplifications in alarm distribution to support less complex products.

Addendum af contains 32 parts. Changes include separating the detection of fault conditions from intrinsic reporting and making sure event reporting property descriptions are consistent. Other addendums include changing the description of the reliability property and improving fault detection in event enrollment objects and the specification of event reporting.