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Because of its open nature, Timber is easily adapted and enhanced to meet customers' needs. In that sense it has few limitations. |
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Through direct I/O, Timber can control virtually any lighting panel or contactor, such as ASCO and GE lighting systems. We communicate
directly with Square D Powerlink panels through Modbus. |
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Timber can connect to any equipment with an OPC, LONWorks or Modbus protocol interface. We can also connect to any equipment via direct I/O. We have connected to York, Trane, Mammoth, Carrier and other equipment vendors. |
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This is like asking how tasty next year's wine crop will be. The number of factors with regard to energy usage, efficiency and savings are enormous. For example, if a facility is manually controlled by a diligent facilities manager, the savings may not be high at all. If the facility has little current regard for energy efficiency, the savings could be significant. The types of savings not only include a reduction in energy consumption, but also in demand and quite possibly power factor control (for electricity) as well as fuel savings for cooling and heating water and other fossil fuel consuming equipment. |
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This number is limited only by memory and processor speed constraints. We
think it is in the tens of thousands of I/O points. |
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Timber itself is not a
distributed solution. It resides on a PC that communicates with distributed systems. ASG has developed several of these distributed networks for
our customer base. |
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Yes, through an OPC connection. |
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At the moment, no. OPC is
used to communicate to BACnet. |
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We support Opto-22, Modbus, and OPC. We deal with a few legacy protocols as well. Additionally, custom drivers can be developed to communicate
with non-standard equipment. |
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A web-based solution is
currently under development. |
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A quote requires a building inspection, a review of existing equipment
and available electrical drawings, interviews with personnel to determine what they would like to accomplish, and any budgetary or other
constraints. |
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That depends on a number of factors. If the facility already has a
system in place that is doing some kind of control, the return on investment may not be that high. The real ROI in this case is the ability for
Timber to consolidate all data to a central location, allowing for efficiency gains in both maintenance and responsiveness. For those facilities
that do not already have existing energy management equipment, the typical payback for the system is two years or less. We have had paybacks as
small as nine months. |
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The typical customer
has a wide variety of energy control systems, and the need or desire to bring them under a single control umbrella. Our past customers include
department stores, hospitals, manufacturing facilities, and warehousing facilities. |
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The open architecture, which allows our system to communicate with any facility providers' hardware (HVAC systems, lighting control, consumption monitoring equipment, security systems, and so on) makes this system unlike most others that are available. |
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Timber is a tool to manage and display information about building resources, not necessarily just energy-related. It operates with an open protocol framework. It provides centralized overview control, but interacts with distributed controls as necessary. |
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