Federation complex.
The Federation complex, being built by Mirax Group, is the largest high-rise construction project not only on the territory of the Moscow City business center, but throughout Russia. Upon completion of construction, the building will consist of two towers — “West” and “East”, 243 and 360 m high, respectively, as well as a central spire 435 m high. The total area of the towers will be more than 420 thousand m. It is planned to locate company offices, apartments, as well as restaurants, shopping and entertainment centers.
A distinctive feature of this project is the use of comprehensive intelligent building management. In the Federation Tower, all engineering systems are automated: ventilation, air conditioning, heating, water supply, drainage, sewerage, electricity, fire alarm, etc.
In the West Tower alone, it is planned to install more than 7,500 pieces of equipment from different manufacturers. The total number of connection points for various devices to the automation system is 16,800, the length of connecting cables is measured in tens of kilometers. Such “saturation” of a building with technical devices poses the task of constructing a Building Management System. ARMO-GROUP specialists, who developed the automation project for the already erected West Tower, chose for this the Building Management System (BMS) standard, which is today widely used in the creation of “smart” buildings.
In particular, the Metasys M5 SCADA system, developed by Johnson Controls, was used at this facility. Its advantage is a multi-level distributed architecture, which allows you to combine the life support systems of a building into an integral fault-tolerant infrastructure. The modular principle of organization and wide scaling capabilities make it possible to connect up to 32 thousand control points to the system, and do this gradually, as individual floors of the building are put into operation.
The facility management system has a three-level structure: the first is represented by controllers integrated into field networks; the second is network processes that collect information; third level — servers and workstations designed to control engineering equipment, maintain an archive of data and alarms.
The BACNet protocol is used to transmit data at the upper level (management level). At the “field” level, it was decided to use another popular standard — LON. With its help, for example, data is transferred to the central dispatch console from heat and electricity meters.
“This technology is very convenient for the building owner, who can easily combine all signals from engineering equipment into a single circuit and control it as he sees fit,” says Artur Aleksandrov, construction director of the Federation complex.
Simple advantages of complex technologies
The automation of the Federation’s engineering systems is dictated not by the fashion for high-tech solutions, but by economic calculations. According to research by the Swiss Association of Ventilation and Air Conditioning Equipment Manufacturers, the cost of a modern automation system is up to 15% of the cost of the entire building. Moreover, by reducing operating costs and the consumption of electricity, water and heat by 20-30%, the payback period for such a system is 3-5 years.
According to Andrey Golovin, director of the association for building automation BIG-RU, until recently the active development of intelligent building management systems in our country was hampered by poor awareness of potential customers about the experience of creating such facilities and low prices on the domestic market for energy and labor, which made it possible not to think too much about the cost of operating the facility. But now resource-saving technologies are becoming a mandatory element of any modern project.
The advantages of using automatic solutions are clearly visible in the example of the organization of a heat and electricity metering system implemented in the apartments of the West Tower with a total area of more than 9000 m2, located on the 51st — 56th floors. In total, 82 MULTICAL® heat meters and 41 electricity meters from Kamstrup, the world leader in the production of ultrasonic heat meters, are installed here. There are 2 computers installed in separate panels for each apartment. The first takes into account the readings of ULTRAFLOW® flow transducers installed respectively on the heating supply and return pipelines. Through pulse dividers, flow meters are connected to it, controlling the supply and circulation of hot water. The second computer takes into account the cooling energy and the supply of cold water; it also receives data from the electric meter through a special module. This scheme ensures centralization of accounting for the consumption of all resources simultaneously.
According to ARMO-GROUP specialists, at the design stage, the most optimal metering devices for this facility were selected based on parameters such as accuracy and consistency of metrological characteristics, long service life, compactness and ease of installation. The decisive points that determined the choice of equipment brand were the ability to transfer data to a single system via the LON protocol and excellent technical support from Kamstrup specialists.
The automatic meter reading system provides access to real-time data. The dispatcher is able to monitor the dynamics and distribution of consumption of all resources in individual areas on the monitor screen, and monitor the performance of each system. For example, a leak or rupture of a pipeline will be instantly recognized by the MULTICAL® heat meter as an excess of the permissible difference in coolant volumes in the supply and return pipelines. The device immediately signals this to the control panel. The controller closes the valve, stopping the supply of coolant to the “dangerous” section of the heating system. “Any leak or accident will be instantly detected and eliminated as soon as possible,” note ARMO-GROUP engineers. “Given that the Federation Tower apartments are classified as luxury real estate and will have very expensive finishes, this is especially important.”
A huge building can be managed by just a few people. The control room is connected to an uninterruptible power supply system; it performs its work in any situation that may arise in the tower,” says Pavel Peka, an expert on power supply and automation at the Federation project. To increase reliability, the project provides for the presence of two simultaneously operating control rooms: if one of them fails for some reason, the second will continue to manage all processes.
The real effect of using high-tech smart home solutions in the Federation Tower can only be assessed after its commissioning. However, it can already be assumed that the implementation of this project will set a new bar for energy efficiency and automation throughout Russian business construction for many years to come.
Kamstrup press service