Web Services—A New Energy Management Tool

Abstract

Integrating building systems has long been touted as an emerg-
ing technology, a development which will provide energy engineers
with a powerful tool for optimizing energy use. The technical ability to
integrate building systems has existed for many years, but the difficul-
ties involved in writing custom interfaces to all the computer systems
involved made it impractical in all but a few “showpiece” applications.
Recently a new technology called web services has gained acceptance,
and this technology promises to make building integration practi-
cal. This article takes a non-programmer’s approach to web services,
describing what they are and how energy engineers can use them. A
discussion of the forthcoming ASHRAE standard for web services is
also presented.