Mr. Jin Kawasaki, Head Researcher of the Information Technology R&D Center at Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, explains how ICONICS is being used for the Mitsubishi Electric research and development case study: their SUSTIE smart net zero energy building and in particular how ICONICS GENESIS64 software can be used for future solutions for smart buildings and cities.

Video Transcript

[0:00] Ted Hill, ICONICS President and CEO 

As part of Mitsubishi Electric support for Sustainable Development Goals, its research and development group in Japan built the SUSTIE building. SUSTIE is a combination of the word SUSTIE and energy. And the purpose of the building is to do research and demonstrate technology that can save energy and improve the building's occupants health and comfort. The research is focused on accelerating development for Zeb compliant, zero energy buildings using energy savings technologies. A Zeb building is one that on an annual basis has net zero or almost zero primary energy consumption. This can be achieved while maintaining a comfortable environment for everybody that works in the building using renewable energy sources such as solar panels in through energy saving technologies in the building, such as solar shading high efficiency equipment. Later today, I'll share a little more insight about the scope and scale of the primary research that Mitsubishi Electric's engaged in; it's impressive. In the SUSTIE building, the research is primarily focused on high efficiency equipment, natural energy, building simulation technology, and ICONICS health and comfort. The ICONICS software platform was chosen to manage the SUSTIE building and validate its overall energy performance. I'm pleased this morning that Jin Kawasaki from the SUSTIE building will be sharing with us more about the research being done there in the role that ICONICS place. Jin is the Head Researcher of Information Technology at SUSTIE. He'll be joining us remotely and sharing an overview of how he and his team use ICONICS. Jin has more than 10 years of experience with the R&D team focused on building operations and maintenance. Currently, he's investigating how IoT platforms can help solve the challenges related to energy, efficiency, space utilization, and occupant wellbeing. After we hear from Jin, Jotham Kildea from the ICONICS team, he's going to do a demo of the SUSTIE software, Jotham leads our Solution Sales Engineering team. That's the engineers that work with customers on how they can solve their project requirements with the ICONICS portfolio. Jotham's experience at ICONICS covers a wide range of industries including building management, large infrastructure projects like airports, and Jotham's direct engagement with customers makes him a valuable part of the team that helps guide our future development with the projects that the engineering team at ICONICS is working on. Jin, thanks for taking the time to join us today for Connect 2021. Over to you.

[2:55] Jin Kawasaki, Head Researcher of the Information Technology R&D Center at Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Thank you, Ted. I am happy to attend Connect 2021. Hello, everyone. Thank you for your time. My name is Jin Kawasaki. I'm Head Researcher of the Information Technology R&D Center at Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. Here are the contents of today's presentation. Today I'm going to talk about our collaboration project with ICONICS. By the end of my presentation, hopefully, you'll have a better understand how we use GENESIS64 for our technology demonstration. In this first part of my presentation, I'd like to start with the objective of our project. We're a department of corporate R&D group at Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. And we develop and evaluate technologies independently of our business units. In 2020, we started collaboration project with ICONICS as one of our research activities. The objectives of this project are technology demonstrations for future smart building solutions of our company. To achieve the objective, we have installed technologies from both sides into our tape test facility. In this presentation, I will explain this collaboration project. In this part of my presentation, I would like to explain our SUSTIE test facility; we call the facility SUSTIE. This is SUSTIE exterior. SUSTIE is an office building with four floors, and its construction completed in October 2020. I will explain three points of SUSTIE: these are certification, equipment, and workplace This slide shows certifications about safety and wellness of SUSTIE. SUSTIE has received two certifications: Bels and CASB wellness office. Bels sees a certification system for energy saving in Japan CASB wellness office is a certification system for health and comfort in Japan. SUSTIE has highest rank of both classifications, and this is a first in Japan. Next point is equipment. This slide shows high efficiency equipment of SUSTIE. SUSTIE significantly reduced power consumption by soling. Mitsubishi Electric's unique high efficiency equipment, for example, VRF, air conditioner, heat recovery ventilation, LED lighting, the distribution system, hot water heat pump, and high efficient elevators. These occupants support power saving at SAS, their last point is workplace. This slide shows workplaces of SUSTIE. SUSTIE seeks to create an office with energy saving and comfort; please look at left side picture. SUSTIE has large windows outside and huge open area. Therefore, office workers feel enough brightness and openness in the area. Additionally, there are a variety of office rooms with the activity based working concept. office workers are able to freely choose where they want to work. So far, I've explained our new test facility. In the next part of my presentation, I will explain how we use GENESIS64 at the facility. As I mentioned earlier, the objective of this project is technology demonstrations for future smart building solutions. And we have installed technologies from both sides into SUSTIE to achieve the objective. So, we developed the three solutions by using GENESIS6 in this project: energy management, comfort monitoring, and occupancy and space utilization. Today, I'd like to show you these developed solutions. Before moving on these solutions, let me explain overview of system. This slide shows overview of SUSTIE system. GENESIS64 is integrated existing systems with standard protocols BACnet IP, SQL, and REST API of the construction of SUSTIE. SUSTIE core engine is one of the existing systems, and it is R&D platform. The platform stores SUSTIE data, such as building models and historical data, and provide technologies such as simulations and controls with the role of technology demonstrations by this integrated system.

[7:55]

Now, I'd like to move on to solutions. First solution is energy management. Using this cool screen, operators can confirm hourly and daily electric power to realize their operation. This bar graph describes energy consumptions, and this line graph means energy generations. As you can see, these graphs show generation power is higher than consumption power. So, save operation is successful in this case. Second solution is comfort monitoring. Operators easily understand office comfort and air quality on floor plan by values and colors. There are over 300 points of environment sensors in SUSTIE, for example, CO2, CO, TVOC, temperature, pollen, illuminance, humidity, and so on. This is a new type of comfort monitoring solutions. Third solution is occupancy and space utilization. Operators can change building operations based on occupancy and space utilization data for energy and safety. Please look at this heat map. The heat map shows hourly utilization of a room to save energy or prevent infections. Operators can change temperature set points or ventilation volumes based on the utilization of the room. Additionally, we analyze data in some different way using GENESIS64 in this screen. I just covered the topic of how we use GENESIS64 in our collaboration project. In the last part of my presentation, I'd like to explain the reason why we choose GENESIS64. First, GENESIS64 has rich analysis and visualization functions. We can visualize SUSTIE data in the variety of ways to meet our requirements using these to the features. In the demonstration, energy management uses graphs; comfort monitoring uses layers; occupancy and utilization use icons and heat maps. And we can use these complex data analysis through lightweight data access. Second, GENESIS64 offers advanced asset management. We can use Object Management features of building in a variety of approaches. User can add multiple attributes such as positions, categories, users, and other things to one object. Lastly, GENESIS64 provides each process to easy install. To add GENESIS64 to existing SUSTIE system, we simply use the standard data connectivity, such as BACnet/IP, SQL, and REST API. What I like to emphasize is this: GENESIS64 features strongly support our technology the most for SUSTIE. Well, I'd like to conclude my presentation, we successfully developed and demonstrated solutions with our technologies and GENESIS64. So, we continue to use GENESIS64 as a part of our R&D platform and demonstrate future solutions for smart buildings and cities. Thank you very much.