Building Energy Resilience

On August 6^th, the Commissioner of the New York City department of health issued an order[1] to all commercial building owners/operators in the City requiring the adoption of a new standard, issued in June 2015 by ASHRAE[2], titled Standard 188 - Legionellosis: Risk Management for Building Water Systems. The order to adopt this standard was in response to the recent Legionellosis outbreak (also known as Legionnaire’s Disease), which has resulted in 12 deaths, sickened more than 100 people, and is believed to have originated from a rooftop cooling tower above a deli in the South Bronx[3].

Back in 2012 I polled our office to find out what mobile apps for HVAC and energy analysis our engineers were experimenting with in the field or back at the office, and summarized those results in a blog post Top Apps for HVAC and Energy Analysis. I also wrote an update to that post in 2013. As you’re undoubtedly aware, things change quickly in the tech sector—and the app marketplace for engineers and commissioning folks is no exception. Given that it’s been two years since I last dug into this topic, I figured it’s time to see what’s new. As with the last posts, I have two caveats before we begin: first, while these apps can be very useful, we still don’t use them for critical analysis, but more as a very powerful back-of-the-envelope equivalent. Critical analysis still happens desk-side for us. Second is that we are an office with a mix of smartphone platforms—a little more than 50% use Apple’s iOS with the balance using Android. We also have a couple of iPads for field use. For simplicity in writing this, I’ve focused on iOS apps—but for most of these, Android versions are also available in the Google Play store.

A handful of years ago we worked with a local organization to help upgrade a portion of their building’s legacy pneumatic building controls to a modern building management system (BMS). We performed the project work in a partnership with a local controls contractor as well as with the building owner’s local energy efficiency utility (that provided financial support because the work also provided the opportunity to save a large chunk of electrical and gas energy). The project was overall a big success—saving 20% on the owner’s annual electric bill and 10-15% on natural gas.

As a company that does a good amount of retrocommissioning (RCx) – the commissioning process applied to existing buildings – when taking on a new project we are often faced by a question asked by both ourselves and our clients: “Where do we start?”

With the holiday season in full swing and airline travel at one of its annual peaks, I thought I’d take the opportunity to geek-out on the subject of HVAC systems on commercial airplanes.

Replacement Chiller Needed – But What’s the Cooling Load?

We were hired recently by a commercial customer to work on the replacement of a ~120 ton chiller plant dating back to at least the 1980s. When we were brought on board, the plan was to install a 165 ton chiller to replace the existing unit. The facility had no building management system (DDC) and therefore the owner didn’t have the ability to accurately assess the building’s actual cooling load. In our experience, many customers in our area who do not have process loads actually have had cooling loads come down over the past 20 years. This trend is likely due to reduced lighting waste heat resulting from lighting efficiency upgrades and improved windows (low-e). We decided it may be a good idea to meter the plant to determine actual loads before sizing the new chiller plant.

I recently had a meeting with one of my favorite long-term clients. We met to discuss some upcoming work, and while there, I poked around in the chiller plant mechanical room to see how things were running. We were involved in design review and commissioning for the new chiller plant, and have been impressed with its efficiency. It’s a water cooled chiller with high efficiency, magnetic bearing compressors and all the bells and whistles. In the past, we’ve metered consistently high performance out of the chiller plant as a whole, saving the client many thousands of dollars per year in electrical savings.

The software business and the commercial construction industry wouldn’t seem to have a lot in common. Just start with the workers: geeks in cubes versus people in hard hats and steel-toed boots. But going beyond the obvious differences, both industries operate with many of the same challenges and pressures. Let's start with the similarities and then look at how the building commissioning process may offer valuable lessons for the software industry.

A year or so ago I was part of an “office share” office where I had my own desk in shared office space with other professionals in unrelated fields. At the time, I lived 40 miles from our company offices here in Burlington, and to cut down on the daily commute, for a few days each week I worked out of this shared office closer to my home. It was really a great place to be, interesting, and much better for productivity that siting at the kitchen table!

It’s been 28 years since the April 1986 explosion of the #4 reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in Ukraine. The temporary concrete and steel sarcophagus containing the destroyed reactor, built with the assistance of nearly half-a-million Soviet workers known as “liquidators,” is showing signs of age, as well as signs of its hasty construction. A large multinational project dubbed New Safe Confinement is currently underway, in which a huge steel truss, covered in stainless steel plate, will cover a span 250 feet wide and 850 feet long, to contain the existing sarcophagus.