US High School Kaiserslautern-Vogelweh

Sales engineer Philipp Kraus and his team from the Kieback&Peter Mannheim office were faced with a whole series of unusual challenges when they read the specifications of the contract for the US armed forces. It wasn’t just the large scale of the “High-School Kaiserslautern-Vogelweh” project that was exciting. The number and type of unusual special orders was also something out of the ordinary: Among other things, the building contractor wanted all text on the displays of the building management system (BMS) and automation station to be bilingual, written both in German and in English. Furthermore, twelve monitors were to be centrally controllable so that they could display information individually to the students, and numerous third-party systems had to be digitally integrated. These included, for example, self-darkening window panes as well as electricity and heat meters. In four closed-off building areas with irrigated green walls covered in plants, the Kieback&Peter system also needs to guarantee constant humidity. No easy task – “but anyone can do easy,” says Philipp Kraus.

The specific work is carried out by sensors and actuators in all High School areas: For example, CO2 sensors report the air quality to the controllers. If necessary, they increase the ventilation power using actuators. The same applies to humidity regulation in the areas with green walls: Based on the measurements taken by the humidity sensors, the controllers tell actuator motors (actuators) to open windows wider or close windows more. The integration of the darkening glass panes in the auditorium is particularly interesting: The user can determine the degree of darkness via a touch panel. The BACnet command from the controller sends control signals to the window panes, where a metal coating provides a steplessly variable darkening effect.

If set to automatic mode, the windows darken automatically in strong sunlight to prevent the room from heating up too much. The team has integrated the digital heating and electricity meters for energy management into the building automation system via M-Bus or LON – the flexible DDC controllers also govern these protocols natively as well as BACnet. The twelve monitors, on which information can be individually displayed by the school management, were integrated by the technicians via IP. Each monitor has its own IP address so that different content can be displayed, such as the cafeteria menu or school information. The team also fulfilled the building contractor’s wish to be able to present all system texts in German and English: Any German text was translated by professionals and integrated into the system. Additionally, the building contractor received instructional videos in both languages. Despite many tricky challenges, the Kieback&Peter team always gets the job done.