Building Energy Resilience

Wireless networks are everywhere in 2014. I have on my person 3 wireless networks happening at any given moment (4G LTE, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi). I am a walking source of radio everywhere I go. And this is only the beginning. As more wireless devices proliferate for personal and commercial use, the spectrum will only grow more crowded and complicated. Are you prepared as wireless technology penetrates the HVAC automation market? Do you understand how radio propagates with respect to data and networks? I hope to scratch the surface and share some of this with you in the following paragraphs.

For a recent commissioning project, part of our scope of work was to test an emergency power system for a data center. Because this data center was a very important part of the client company’s work, the system and all components needed to work as intended by the design, and it was crucial that it be tested with all aspects involved before the data center was utilized. This was to ensure there would be no loss of power to the data center servers if any issues were identified. In order to properly test this mission critical system, we not only needed to understand how each component worked, but we also needed to put together full testing documents that included the relationship between all of the components. To make the entire process more fluent, we suggested a coordinated effort for creating documents and testing the system.

Despite my relatively short amount of time working in the building commissioning field, I have been able to witness firsthand the serious consequences resulting from a lack of HVAC preventive maintenance (PM) in a facility. From dirty filters and coils to broken outside air dampers, lack of PM can lead to premature equipment failure, poor indoor air quality, an assortment of other problems, and usually increased energy and maintenance costs for a building owner. Indeed, it can be challenging for a facilities team to stick to a preventive maintenance plan after they have fallen into a reactive maintenance mode, but the advantages of a more proactive approach can be beneficial to everyone on the facilities team, as well as the building owner.

I take climate change very seriously and do what I can in my personal life and through my career in energy efficient building commissioning to mitigate my impact on the environment. But I am also cautious of doomsayers who call for unrealistic achievements or all is lost. So I was motivated to do some investigating recently when I read that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that “global emissions need to hit zero by 2100 to keep global warming below 2°C by the turn of the century.” That struck me as such an idealistic goal. Can we really do that? I decided I wanted to educate myself and, of course, found that this iceberg is deeper than I expected, and the answer is not simple. In this post I’d like to share its complexity and, in a subsequent post, I will speak to my interpretation of realistic goals.

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.

Who knows technology?

I should know better than to presume anything when someone is speaking about their “furnace,” because what they most frequently mean is “the thing that makes heat.” I was recently asked about a home heater replacement by a relative who is the chief engineer at a major communications company. His question was, “should I replace my furnace to save energy?” I inquired about the efficiency and he replied 88%, which is pretty good for an oil-fired furnace, so I told them that was probably the best they could do. Then I was asked, “what about our hot water heater?,” which was described as “a tankless type fed off the furnace.” At that point I realized that my friend wasn’t using accurate language and that was causing me to give him bad advice. He in fact has a high-mass oil boiler with an indirect fired hot water tank, and since the boiler is near the end of its useful life, he does have an opportunity to replace it with a higher performance boiler.

Healthcare operating rooms (ORs) are one of the most critical types of indoor environments. That means OR designers and operators tend to pay a high level of attention to OR HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) systems. However, many OR designers and users overlook opportunities to operate OR HVAC systems more efficiently.

In a previous blog post, I discussed our process for constructing a scope of work to perform a campus water consumption analysis. At the time, we knew a minimal amount about the existing metering system. A site visit was conducted to allow us to put our eyes on each meter listed for the campus. After this was completed, we were able to provide helpful information to our client regarding the current water consumption and metering system as well as next steps for reducing their consumption using a greater level of water use monitoring.

Before joining Cx Associates I worked as a sales engineer in western New York, with a specialty in Variable Refrigerant Flow and Ductless Split systems. With the new popularity of these systems across the country there are still many questions facilities managers, engineers, and contractors have regarding their cold weather performance. There are several important aspects of these systems to keep in mind before deciding whether they are right for your facility or project that requires cold weather heating.

The least utilized part of the building commissioning process is the act of going back to a completed project and proving the monetary value of the commissioning work. This is an added cost but is very important for the building owner as well as the commissioning agent to ensure changes were implemented correctly. Fortunately, we have many affordable options these days to measure the energy consumption of our building equipment before and after our commissioning work. Armed with this real-life performance data, we can present the owner with hard evidence of the value of fine-tuning a building’s mechanical system. We recently did such a review of two buildings which underwent building commissioning in the past 18 months. By analyzing the data, we found savings for these buildings range from 18-30% with relatively short payback periods.