Service Abstraction Layer for Building Operating Systems: Enabling portable applications and improving system resilience

Abstract

For large scale implementation of Demand Response programs, applications enabling Demand Response would need to be portable between buildings. Building Operating Systems are an essential strategic piece for enabling portable applications, which work with several hardware implementations from different vendors. These building operating systems can effectively be used to implement large-scale Demand Response implementations. Currently, though, the service layer of building operating systems requires direct integration with specific services, and thereby have requirements for specific implementations of services to be present in a specific building. This paper proposes the introduction of a Service Abstraction Layer to decouple the application from the specific implementations of services, as well as to introduce the concept of redundancy in service responsibility areas. These changes would allow for application portability between buildings but also allow for building operating system resiliency.A prototype abstraction layer is implemented and tested. Results show the introduction of a Service Abstraction Layer has promising benefits for building operating systems, and successfully decouples the applications from the building operating system implementation, as well as improving system reliability and resiliency. For smart grid applications, the addition of a service abstraction layer allows for large-scale portable applications, but would still require some form of standardization of communication protocols for different service types.