- The author struggled to identify why a gas boiler was running in a climate-controlled greenhouse on a warm day, requiring manual correlation of data across five separate, siloed systems.
- The root issue is that building data is often controlled by vendors, not the owners, leading to locked-in, non-interoperable systems designed for engineers rather than end-users.
- The EU Data Act now grants businesses the right to access their machine-readable data from connected products, shifting leverage to data generators.
- Home Assistant is presented as a mature, open-source platform for data ownership, originally for homes but applicable to businesses to avoid vendor lock-in and subscription models.
- The Model Context Protocol enables AI assistants to query unified building data in plain language, democratizing access for non-specialists like botanists or financial controllers.
- To ensure sustainability, systems should have a boring, well-documented infrastructure layer while empowering users to create dashboards and automations via plain-language interfaces.
- Organizations are urged to inventory their data systems, request machine-readable access under the Data Act, and experiment with tools like Home Assistant to reclaim control of their building data.