Pioneering building system technology on Australia’s Surf Coast

An iconic destination known by surfers the world over as the home of Bell’s Beach, Torquay is now also setting the standard around the world for green buildings with the Surf Coast Shire Civic Building. Born out of a desire to reflect the Surf Coast community’s environmental conscience, the building has been awarded a 5 Star Green Star - Office Design V3 rating by the Green Building Council of Australia as well as gaining international acclaim from the KNX Association, receiving an International Best Project Award at the 2012 KNX Awards held in Frankfurt, Germany.

The building places a focus on energy efficiency and water conservation, resulting in reduced running costs for the council. “Council has always been determined that this community’s civic building should be a regional flagship in education for sustainable development (ESD) that reflects our community’s efforts to protect our local environment and live more sustainably,” said the Surf Coast Shire Mayor, Cr Brian McKiterick.

What is unique about this project is that while each subsystem was designed to operate independently, they all operate seamlessly as one system. This proves the power and flexibility of KNX; the ability to deliver a truly converged energy and resource efficient building, one that is simple to manage and easy to operate.

At the heart of this building is a mySmartCTI KNX solution bringing lighting control, energy and resource monitoring, hydraulic services monitoring and management, and a building performance interface all onto the one converged operating system. KNX is a worldwide standard for home and building control with over 70% market share of the smart-building market in Europe alone and is rapidly gaining ground in Australia due to its open-source and vendor-neutral platform. The key ESD components of the project include: energy-efficient lighting control; sports flood lighting; pressurised under-floor air conditioning; renewable energy; photovoltaic system; wind turbine system; energy monitoring; energy display and tracking.

Lighting control

The KNX lighting control solution operates across the Civic Building and the adjacent sportsground’s flood lighting. The building utilises a combination of Hager KNX wall switches and KNX 360° occupancy sensors, and ABB KNX colour touch screens and KNXDALI gateways. All of the lighting controls and building monitoring functions are available via the NETxLAB Voyager Server Professional software, including an interface to the building’s security system which allows for complete shutdown once the building security is armed.

The sportsground flood lighting operates from a dedicated KNX colour touch screen, allowing each floodlight luminaire on each of the floodlighting poles to be switched separately and selectively. The flood lighting control system is also able to be operated in automatic mode where ambient light sensors are used to instantly adjust the floodlight output.

Services monitoring and control

In addition to controlling the lighting throughout the civic precinct, the KNX network is used to monitor and control many of the services. These include monitoring and control of the hydraulics systems as follows: fire and rainwater pump house; rainwater tank volume; solar hot water plant pump status.

A number of mechanical services are also monitored and controlled via KNX. These include: toilet exhaust fans; communications closet ventilation fans operated by temperature sensors; electric panel heaters.

Renewable energy

Central to the energy efficiency of the building is the use of renewable energy. A vertical axis wind turbine rated up to 1 kW is supplemented with a 2.5 kW photovoltaic system. Both systems have been fitted with high-level output modules which feed data on the renewable energy systems into the KNX network in real time.

Weather station

An ABB KNX weather station is used to monitor the ambient weather conditions and feed this information into the KNX system where the input data is utilised by a number of the building’s systems. This data includes ambient external light levels, outdoor temperature, wind speed and direction, and precipitation status.

Interactive performance display panel

A 42″ LCD panel connected to the KNX network is located in the foyer and provides a real-time graphical display of building performance data and statistics. A KNX/IP gateway also allows information to be sourced from the internet for display on the panel.