The importance of connectivity in the HVAC&R sector was highlighted by BSRIA experts at the recent BSRIA global HVAC trends presentations given at ISH 2019 in Frankfurt.
Socrates Christidis, research manager heating and renewables, spoke about how EU legislation is pushing for changes in both heating and domestic hot water markets. He presented in this context the latest market trends in heating and renewables, but also developments in district energy applications. Christidis also highlighted that a developing trend is “the uptake of smart connected heating solutions in residential applications”.
Saziye Dickson, research manager VAC&R, presented the latest trends in air conditioning and refrigeration. She explained the key findings of BSRIA’s new AC study in Africa and talked about the refrigerant trends affecting the air conditioning markets. The attendees learned about the opportunities BSRIA sees in the aftersales AC market, enabled by remote monitoring.
Henry Lawson, senior market intelligence analyst, covered the key findings of the latest Building Automation and Control Systems (BACS) study, which contains information about BACS software, hardware, controllers and field devices. Germany has the largest BACS market in Europe, followed by France and Italy. There is clearly a trend towards IP-enabled devices: “data is increasingly migrating to the Cloud and SaaS is growing across Europe”. The uptake of smart connected solutions is accelerating both in heating and air conditioning sectors: BSRIA’s latest report on this topic gave insight in this segment.
Anette Meyer-Holley, WMI business manager, wrapped up the BSRIA industry presentation, putting the latest trends in the HVAC industry in the perspective of some key mega trends. “Urbanisation, digitalisation and servitisation are a few of these mega trends” which are disrupting the traditional business models in our industry. Connectivity and the Internet of Things (IoT) have an increasing role to play in this environment and firms should adapt their business models by embracing BACS, Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS), smart connected HVAC and smart home solutions to deliver wellbeing in buildings.
Meyer-Holley concluded the presentation by “emphasising that data and data analytics is expected to have a significant impact on the building services industry”.