Building Energy Resilience

Fun and profit can come in unexpected ways to energy efficiency engineers. A couple of months ago while at a jobsite conducting central air handler control testing, there was the inevitable wait-around time. So I stopped to take a look at a central heating hot water plant we commissioned a couple of years ago. It’s a basic system - an all-primary layout with two boilers and variable flow 7.5 horsepower pumps, controlled by a piping differential pressure (DP) control sensor located in a remote section of the distribution piping. The plant serves a few dozen single duct VAV box reheat coils. A pretty typical system.

This engineer recently attended a seminar on “Innovation Implementation: Developing Sales Strategies and Tactics for Growth,” which spent most of its eight hours discussing sales. I found it interesting that this word – sales – caused such a visceral negative reaction in me as well as in some of the other attendees. We did not want to talk about sales and we certainly didn't want to be categorized as “salespeople.” By the middle of the seminar, however, I had a totally different opinion of this word and now realize I am a salesperson! So I better get over my stigmatizing and figure out how I can change this involuntary negative reaction to the idea of “sales.”

I had the good fortune to return to my building engineering design roots in San Francisco to attend Greenbuild 2012. The conference is an amazing confluence of thought leaders, product suppliers and building design and construction professionals gathered around the theme of making the built environment more sustainable. What a cohesive and wonderful concept, right?

A recent Test and Balance (T&B) report for a central air handler made me really question the value of some of our current T&B practices. The system was a conventional variable air volume (VAV) air handler with a return air fan and single duct reheat terminal VAV boxes. The purpose of the T&B process is to adjust and record air handler performance to achieve the specified maximum flow rates.

Over the past year or so, I've been involved in several online discussions where the question of how to define what a green building is has resulted in some very interesting comments. A lot of it stems from some people’s view that the USGBC’s green building rating system, LEED, amounts to nothing more than “green washing” and does not result in more sustainable buildings. They argue that because buildings can obtain certification with minimal improvement in energy use over code minimums, it doesn't work.

I recently visited the construction site for a high performance building project that is pursuing LEED platinum through design-build. The design-build project has all of the bells and whistles that you would expect for LEED platinum: CFL and LED light fixtures with daylighting, energy recovery for ventilation air, and high efficiency heat pumps for heating. Given such a fine collection of green building hardware, I was surprised to find that the high efficiency heat pump heating systems did not meet the state energy code! The particular problem is that the heat pump thermostats do not support temperature setback schedule controls (i.e., scheduled reduction in heating temperature setpoints when the building is unoccupied). A high performance building that does not meet code – how can this happen?!

Cloud-based building automation represents an exciting opportunity for owners of small-to-mid-sized commercial buildings.

A few weeks ago, in Part I of this post, I examined some examples of the types of commissioning issues we frequently encounter in the field. We looked at condensate pipes with incorrect pitch, maintenance valves on pipes installed 14' off the floor with no way to operate them, and air handlers with different capacities that were incorrectly labeled from the factory. All of these issues, had they not been discovered by a commissioning agent, could have had deleterious effects on building performance. Ready for Part II? Here are more examples of issues we often see in the field.

It's easy to forget to reset your building management system (BMS) or a direct digital control (DDC) system seasonally. Did you overwrite your building management system to forgo night-time building temperature setup due to the hot summer this year? Many buildings had a hard time maintaining their cooler daytime temperatures and therefore cancelled the energy saving nighttime setup program. Forgoing this energy savings was worth the extra hours the building was able to maintain proper temperatures during the workday.

Over the last year, I have become the proud owner of an energy efficient home. Designed and built from scratch, based on passive house principles by a team of local building professionals, construction is well underway, and the house will be completed by the end of the year.