Our intelligent edge solutions enable real-time insights and experiences.

Chetan B. Mhatre, Head – Systems Business, PEWIN Division, Panasonic Life Solutions India

How do you view the smart developments happening in residential and commercial buildings?

The adoption of smart products in residential and commercial buildings are on the rise. Living space owners are opting for products which can enhance their lifestyle helping them benefit from the latest technologies.

What are the smart features being incorporated in commercial buildings?

Today, commercial building owners look at four major factors like, energy efficiency and operational efficiency enhancers as well as products that improve productivity of occupants and enable data driven decision making. 

How is the concept of connected living picking pace in India? How are smart home solutions helping the trend?

Market growth drivers like rapid urbanization, technological advancements, government initiatives and changing lifestyles are driving the accelerated adoption of connected living solutions in India. The Indian market is expanding rapidly, with increasing investments from both domestic and international players. As a result, this growth is driving innovation and competition, leading to more accessible and affordable connected devices and services for consumers.

How is the need for better safety and security in residential buildings pushing smart systems and solutions?

High rise residential buildings are more prone to fire/smoke related losses to life and property. Hence, fire detection is now mandatory in residential buildings above a certain height. Recently fire incidences caused in key cities of the country has led to people raising a number of questions on the need to enhance the norms around safety for residential buildings.

What are the latest smart solutions offered by the company for residential and commercial buildings?

Our intelligent edge solutions enable real-time insights and experiences, delivered by intelligent apps and on-premises software. With virtually limitless computing power offered by the cloud, you get a framework for real impact. This also helps to reduce the amount of data transmitted and stored in the cloud.

We have systems which help our customer to achieve their goals for operational efficiency, productivity improvement, and energy efficiency in commercial spaces. In, residential spaces our products help our customers to have convince, comfort and energy efficiency.

The following are the automation offers from Panasonic:

Home Automation: We provide wired and wireless solutions for Home Automation. The products range from standalone sensors that control light based on occupancy and lux level to integrated system for controlling, lights, fan, curtains, AV systems, air-conditioning and even appliances from a single app. 

Lighting Management System (LMS): We provide both on/off and dimming controls for the lighting management system to control the lighting based on demand response, daylight harvesting, occupancy etc.

Our hybrid (wired + wireless) lighting management system helps to reduce installation costs and increase flexibility in areas where switches and sensors can be placed. The integration with BMS on open protocol gives an additional edge to the LMS for control and analysis.

Building Management System (BMS): This is a state-of-the-art BMS, where we have used most innovative technologies and have also managed to provide it at affordable cost. We are also aiming to promote IoT architecture and project haystack which is on the advanced side, secured and faster communication protocols like MQTT, Bacnet etc.

This platform also helps to analyze the energy consumption patterns to arrive at an actionable decision. We have built our software platform, knowing that the BMS solutions are becoming software centric. This software platform can integrate with most of the open protocols in the market.

Likes of the New Parliament of India and a world-class Hotel Management University are using Panasonic smart building solutions of Building Automation, Lighting Control System and Classroom solutions. Here the Building Automation Systems are controlled by all engineering services in the building. The state-of-art graphics is capable of showcasing 3D animated graphics.

Here, we are also creating a Sustainability KPI dashboard indicating targets and achievement on KPIs like, HVAC energy consumption, lighting energy consumption, solar energy produced solar energy used, water consumption, water treated and water reused(irrigation/landscaping).

Fire Alarm System: This is the latest in our offerings to facilities/buildings which are looking for fire safe installations. We provide FACP, detectors and devices to monitor and alert fire incidences on the premises. The technologies offered here are remote monitoring, detection at the inception of fire incidence, reduced false alarm incidences, integrated real time video pop-up of the fire incidences in FAS itself.

Our aspiration detectors help our customers get fire alert and trigger necessary actions at the inception of fire incidence to save high capital property and life.

What are the future trends in the smart buildings sector? How are you gearing up for meeting the future needs? 

Wireless technologies, Internet of Things, Cloud BMS, Edge AI, Cybersecurity are the future. Wireless technologies are making strong inroads in this market. However, customers need to be cautious of the proprietary nature of wireless systems which is more of an advantage to supplier.

For example, the internet of things in smart building space enables seamless connectivity between the devices and cloud for data analytics and complex decision making.

Deployment of Cloud BMS provides easy access to multiple buildings data, provides competitive analysis of best performance and worst performing buildings, integrations with various non-BMS software and tools like asset/property management systems are some high-level customization of the user interfaces.

In the midst of the computing industry's efforts to develop more natural user interfaces (NUI), Panasonic has now voice artificial intelligence (AI) which can create a natural user interface for smarter buildings. This means that professionals who are constantly on the go, such as CXOs, surgeons, fire officers, facility managers, and many others, can stay up to date on goals and updates related to energy efficiency, carbon neutrality, safe healthcare and buildings, productivity, machine anomaly alerts, etc.

Panasonic is now developing edge AI for its DDC controllers, which will let it to make complicated decisions closer to the edge and lessen reliance on the cloud.

Hackers can easily access users' primary business systems through HA and BA systems, which often have poor barriers against cyber threats of any kind. Building a robust security foundation for BMS software applications is therefore becoming more and more popular.