Building Energy Resilience

After completion of an ASHRAE Level 2 Energy Audit, a building owner is faced with the question of how to move on to the implementation phase of the identified energy saving opportunities. The audit report provides estimates for annual energy savings for each opportunity, as well as the simple payback to help determine if the measure is financially feasible. However, the audit does not design a measure in enough detail that a contractor can accurately bid or install the measure so that the savings are realized. Therefore we suggest that the building owner hire a technical consultant (designer or commissioning engineer) to develop a bid document that details the design of the measure. This technical consultant must understand the owner’s goals and expectations for the project.

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.

Recently I have performed new construction commissioning services on a project with a job specification document that was over 1200 pages in length. As you can imagine, it was very comprehensive. However, I found that it was comprehensive in all the areas that it didn’t need to be, and not specific enough where it mattered.

Commercial and industrial businesses spend a great percentage of their building costs on creating hot and cold water and pumping it around their facility. This infrastructure includes chillers, boilers, cooling towers, and pumps used for heating, cooling, process cooling, and domestic hot water. Considering how much money is spent on this portion of the business, it is not surprising that there is an increased focus on determining the correct amount of water required to meet the needs of the business. This blog post aims to explain the differences between the various flow meters currently on the market.

Combined heat and power (CHP) systems provide a great opportunity to reduce facility energy costs, to increase the productive use of fossil fuel energy, and to provide distributed generation for the electric power grid. Efficiency programs are providing incentives that make CHP systems increasingly viable and attractive for facility owners and operators. But when you make the choice to install a CHP system, you want to be well-informed of the risks to achieving the expected system performance.

Generating Market Demand

The purpose of energy efficiency programs is to cost effectively generate market demand for energy efficiency that would not be achieved without market intervention. An energy efficiency process evaluation investigates the effectiveness of programmatic interventions through qualitative and quantitative analysis. Marrying the analytical engineering-based approach of impact evaluation with the typically more social science orientation of traditional process evaluation can generate useful, actionable results to help program administrators improve market interventions to increase participation, depth of savings, and market transformation.

Whether your project is new construction, a retrofit, a major renovation, or a focused building upgrade, my success as a commercial building commissioning provider relies heavily on the active participation of other team members. Despite having clear specifications, providing a thorough building commissioning plan, and explaining the process at a kickoff meeting with the owner and affected contractors, we often find that due to the complexity and fast pace of contemporary construction, team members are unclear as to their role in quality assurance and the commissioning process.

Continuing on an earlier blog post on Evaluation, Measurement and Verification (EM&V), a vital source of information for the EM&V process comes from metering. As mentioned in Katie’s recent blog post, there are many types of meters that can be used to collect data for analyzing energy savings. Using the right type of meter is important, but ensuring your engineering team installs it in the right place at the right time for the right duration is also critical to ensuring that the data collected by the meters is both valid and beneficial for the energy analysis for which it will be used.

For both new building commissioning and existing building retrocommissioning projects, I always stress the importance of verifying that the claimed savings are realized through building performance monitoring (trending) using utility bills, sub-meter data, smart meters, or directly through a building management system (BMS). I also encourage you as a building owner to use a benchmarking tool, such as Energy Star Portfolio Manager, to monitor the overall energy usage of the building over time. While studying for my LEED Green Associate (GA) exam, I came across a new performance monitoring system released last year by USGBC called the LEED Dynamic Plaque. My aim in this blog post is to introduce the new USGBC platform and describe how it can help you to monitor your commercial building’s performance and work towards a more efficient and sustainable building.

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.