P4. Extending BACnet for Lighting Control & Interfacing Building Systems with Utilities > Backgorund

Past work at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the area communication protocols for building automation and control systems has resulted in the adoption of the BACnet protocol as ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135. BACnet has also been adopted as a pre-standard by the European Community (ENV 1805-1, ENV 13321-1) and as a Korean national standard (KS X 6909). Japan is progressing towards adopting BACnet as a national standard. BACnet has been proposed as an ISO standard and is currently being processed by ISO TC 205 Building Environment Design. Today there are over 40 manufacturers of commercial BACnet products and approximately 10,000 installed systems worldwide.

NIST facilitated a cooperative arrangement between NEMA, NFPA, and ASHRAE to specifically address the use of BACnet to integrate fire systems with HVAC and other building control systems. The results have been the endorsement of BACnet by NEMA as the preferred way to integrate fire systems with other building systems, additions to the BACnet standard for fire systems that are currently in public review, and a project to revise NFPA 72, the national fire alarm code.

NIST formed a BACnet Interoperability Testing Consortium that has 22 member companies. The work of this consortium has led to the development of proposed companion standard to BACnet that defines conformance tests. This proposed standard has been approved for public review and comment. As part of this work NIST developed software tools for testing BACnet implementations. In February 2000 a BACnet Manufacturer's Association was formed with a charter to establish an industry certification program based on the proposed standard and the work of the NIST consortium.

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