Three engineers predict

the future of building automation control protocols

Viewpoint:
BACnet Versus LONWORKs
By TIM BAKER, Managing Editor

F
ew issues in the HVACR industry engender as much fierce debate as the topic of
control protocols for building automation. The line in the sand cuts sharply be-
tween BACnet and its supporters and LONWORKs and its supporters. No one in
this industry, it seems, is at a loss for words when it comes to this topic. So rather
than editing and filtering these often strong opinions, we’ve decided to share with our
readers some of the more eloquent arguments we recently received on the topic. The ques-
tion posed to the professionals below was: "In the future, will LONWORKS and BAC-
net both provide a unique and valuable service or will one pull away as the clear leader
in usefulness and popularity?"

LonWorks: Intrabuilding, BACnet: Interbuilding

Thomas Hartman, PE building controls much more widely
Principal available to others, such as the finan-
The Hartman Co. cial departments to automate the re-
Marysville, Wash quest and billing for extended hour us-
age, and to the building occupants to
to dominate the market at this level.
Those who wish to develop all
LONWORKS systems tend to deny
that the second level I listed above is
necessary. Connecting to a chiller,

F rom our firm's standpoint there

are really three areas of vendor
dependence in Building Automation
Systems (BAS) that we try to
address. They are:
1. Unitary control (VAV boxes &
other terminal controls)
2. Equipment control (Mechanical
room controls)
3. Workstations (User Interface)
It appears to me that the industry is
in agreement that in the long term we-
have to move to employing standard
Web browsing approaches for worksta-
tions. This will open our industry to
many more skilled designers for this
equipment and make information from
automate their requests for warmer or
cooler conditions and service requests.
It also appears that the Unitary level
is settling out in so far as communica-
tion standards that permit the use of
multiple-vendor products on a single
network. The two most common pro-
tocols are LONWORKS and BACnet.
For strictly HVAC products, each
has about a 50 percent share of prod-
ucts now, but for products outside of
HVAC such as lighting controls and
special purpose equipment for hospital
rooms, hotel rooms, etc, LONWORKS
appears to be dominating those mar-
kets. Therefore, overall, I think it is fair
to say that LONWORKS is beginning
boiler, or air handler is no different
than a VAV box, it has been argued.
And from a connection standpoint this
may be valid. But from a “function”
standpoint, there are enormous differ-
ences. Somewhere in the system there
must be special functions such as time
schedules, trend logs, and very robust
and flexible network based control pro-
grams to operate the equipment opti-
mally under the wide variety of condi-
tions. These functions require
“objects,” special features, and rates of
communications that are not necessary
at the Unitary level and are not all in-
cluded in LONWORKS standards. So,
continued on page 76

56 August 2000 • HPAC Heating/Piping/AirConditioning Engineering

BACNET VS. LONWORKS
continued from page 56
to accomplish these features, an all
LONWORKS system generally em-
ploys a powerful graphics front end
that has scheduling, trending and spe-
cial programming features. Unfortu-
nately, this is in conflict with the in-
dustry move toward the use of simple
browsers for front-end use.
Instead of a widely distributed
system, the system architecture of
such systems is highly centralized.
Such systems mimic closely the way
industrial controls have been inte-
grated for some time and provide
choice for control hardware, but
these systems are usually very limited
in terms of their functional capabili-
ties for the integrated equipment
and can become very dependent on
the front end, which is proprietary
Level 1
Operations workstation
Level 2
BPC BPC
ASC
CAC
ASC
CAC
Level 3
ASC
CAC
ASC
CAC
FIGURE 1.A network that relies on LONWORKs at the unitary level and BACnet at the building level with a Web browser for the interface.
76 August 2000 • HPAC Heating/Piping/AirConditioning Engineering
and limited in its flexibility.
At this time LONWORKS seems
to work very well for the connection
of terminal units (VAV box con-
trollers and other such devices) to
building automation networks. How-
ever, LONWORKS does not have ef-
fective standards for time schedules or
trend logs, so in order to have a func-
tional all-LONWORKS network,
these features have to be part of the
Graphical User Interface (GUI).
There are GUIs available that contain
these features (they come from indus-
trial process automation). But the
most popular (and important, I think)
industry trend today is the move to us-
ing standard Web browsers for the
user interface. However, Web
browsers do not have scheduling or
trend features, which is a limitation to
Scheduling workstation
Internet or Corporate WAN
BSI
To Building 1
BPC BPC
ASC ASC
CAC CAC
ASC ASC
CAC CAC
ASC ASC
CAC CAC
ASC ASC
CAC CAC
the more popular move toward inter-
operability in the industry today.
Our preference is to use the dis-
tributed controllers in the second
level listed above to provide the pro-
gramming and special object services
in a distributed fashion for the entire
network. This permits the use of the
less sophisticated browser user inter-
face, and maintains a truly distributed
network. To do this, the network must
be capable of automatically transfer-
ring additional objects. So far as we
see at this time, BACnet is more ag-
gressively pursuing the standardiza-
tion of these additional objects than
LONWORKS.
Therefore, as seen in Figure 1, a
more forward-looking network may be
one that employs both LONWORKS
continued on page 78
Financial and accounting
workstation
BSI BPI
To Building 2 To Building 3
ASC
CAC
ASC Legend
CAC BSI: Browser support interface
BPC: Building programmable controller
ASC ASC: Application specific controller
CAC
ASC
CAC
BACNET VS. LONWORKS

continued from page 76

and BACnet network options at the
Unitary level (Level 3), or just LON-
WORKs if a single platform is desired
and less function is acceptable at the
Unitary level; a BACnet based net-
work employing Internet Protocol (IP)
at the Building level (Level 2); and
standard Web browsers for user inter-
face.
In so far as longevity is concerned, it
appears LONWORKS is very likelyhere
to stay. Because LONWORKS will
profit most from appealing to the largest
number of nodes served, it will always
target the lower levels (higher volume)
BACnet too HVAC Specific
Richard Starr
Enterprise Corp.
Twinsburg, Ohio
of networks. The more advanced fea-
tures of BACnet could be adopted by
some other entity like Microsoft or Sun
to extend a fully developed protocol
that is used for other networks into the
building automation industry. In gen-
eral, our industry should begin to realize
that in the future,networked systems
will be adapted to programming and
communication standards that are de-
veloped outside this industry. Still, the
industry should be grateful to the BAC-
net developers and support continued
BACnet guidance and influence to net-
working providers as they develop plans
to penetrate our industry.
The Internet
Beats them Both
William R. Elam
VP Engineering
M/E Associates
San Jose, Cal
B ACnet and LONWORKs gurus
have wrestled tirelessly during the
past decade on how to design their
control languages to be superior to
component and control vendors.
■ Much advertisement has focused on
the superiority of each as the “revolu-
tionary” technology. Even a new word
was coined: “interoperability,” thus al-
lowing many building systems to oper-
ate on the same platform.
Many old legacy systems were re-
placed at very high expense to imple-
ment BACnet, LONWORKs and
some had a combination of both. Secu-
rity systems could share status informa-

I t is tempting to compare BACnet to

“beta” and LON to “vhs,” however,
many consulting engineers still think
BACnet is part of the future. The
larger picture however, sees BACnet as
HVAC driven and LON as total facil-
ity driven. In the end, we in the indus-
try need to acknowledge lower engi-
neering/commissioning costs, lower
electrical installation costs, generic
service tools, plug-n-play of different
brand products, and information shar-
ing that makes those with a need-to-
know able to access information.
The first thing to understand is that
the purpose of interoperability is to en-
able communication between various
vendor products. Pneumatic had the 3-
15psi signal, electronic had the 4-20
milliamp signal or 0-10 voltage, and-
DDC in North America is leaning to
LON technology and BACnet. An
owner's goal is to have interchange-
ability (functional replacement of one
vendor’s product with another’s).Cus-
tomer’s want open so they are not
locked into a single vendor. Within
the technical community BACnet is
appearing cumbersome. It was written
by HVAC people only for HVAC ap-
plications. It has a complicated set of
requirements and only requires that a
vendor conform to one of six class lev-
els to say they are BACnet compatible.
This means specifications can be very
misleading to both engineer and build-
ing owner.
LON, on the other hand, is ac-
cepted in a variety of industries. Its
Neuron chipset is widely available
and offered within HVAC, security,
fire/life safety, lighting, etc.The LON
protocol provides a standard method
for exchanging information between
devices. It is already created and gives
a level of consistency between
vendors.Its association is more than
just HVAC types. It includes end
users, consultants, system integrators,
and manufacturers from a variety
of building infrastructure products.
It has become a widely accepted
open standard with a flexible archi-
tecture. It is beginning to make
inroads internationally and residen-
tially as well. The end result might
be that BACnet becomes the “beta”
and LON the “vhs” of the new
millennium. LON was developed
with the same insight as the
Microsoft platform and has included
many manufacterer's in it's develop-
ment. Stay tuned, but my money
is on LON. ■ I Certainly think so.
tion with lighting, heating, ventila-
tion, and air-conditioning systems,
which was an improvement to the
heretofore, but is that what we really
needed?
Meanwhile, Internet technologies
were being refined and applied at an ex-
plosive rate. Ethernet, LAN, WAN,
Java Beans, HTML, TCP, IP, ISP,
DSL/ADSL, ISPs, and E-mail interfaced
and sped the collection of data to the In-
ternet. Data when compiled, squeezed,
manipulated, cross-referenced, bench-
marked etc., etc.,...becomes informa-
tion. A database of information provides
management with the ability to inte-
grate material, engineering, facilities,
production, operating expense, finance
and marketing data (and more) into dy-
namic, timely information. Not once a
minute, day, week, month, quarter, or
season, but in real time, anytime, now!
Trend-logs allow minute correction to
be made to enhance the performance of
HVAC systems.
Real time information is used to op-
timize the performance of buildings,
performance yields of processes, pro-
ductivity and the bottom line. Could
this improvement have happened
without BACnet or LONWORKS?
■

78 August 2000 • HPAC Heating/Piping/AirConditioning Engineering