Evaluation of Fault Prevalence in Commercial Buildings

Lead Performer: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – Berkeley, CA
Partners:
-- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory – Richland, WA
-- University of Nebraska – Lincoln, NE
DOE Total Funding: $1,500,000
Project Term: October 1, 2019 – September 30, 2022
Funding Type: Lab Award

Project Objective

The project team will conduct the efficiency community’s most comprehensive study ever on the prevalence of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) faults in commercial buildings in the United States. This empirical field study will be undertaken over a three-year period of performance. The work is motivated by the findings from a FY2019 scoping study that has vetted the value proposition with a set of 26 stakeholder experts from the industry, automated fault detection and diagnostics (AFDD) users, and researcher communities. The project approach and organization of project tasks is heavily informed by this initial scoping work.

Building upon the preliminary scoping study that was initiated in FY2019, this project will engage partners from industry, academia, and the national laboratories to acquire and analyze empirical data from a sample of buildings and equipment across the U.S. The team will leverage industry’s trend toward scaled deployment of monitoring that is enabling a scale of investigation an order of magnitude greater than has previously been possible. The findings will be published for use by a wide audience of researchers, developers, and users of AFDD technology.

Project Impact

The lack of reliable fault prevalence has been documented as a key barrier to owners and operators who use AFDD technology, as well as to researchers and developers. In aggregate, faults in U.S. commercial buildings alone have been estimated to waste 0.7 quads of energy annually (worth nearly $14 billion). However, this fault estimate can be improved with a more rigorous understanding of fault prevalence as found in the field.

This project approach seeks to focus on packaged rooftop units (RTUs) and air-handling units, and VAV systems. 90% of buildings and nearly half of the commercial floor space is served by rooftop units. In addition, air-handling units are also a key element of the built-up systems that are common in large commercial facilities. Moreover, this focus permits the study of high-impact faults such as those associated air-handling units (AHUs), packaged rooftop units (RTUs), and outside air economizers.

Researchers and developers need robust prevalence data to understand the most important areas of focus for improved algorithms and fault modeling, and to develop refined performance metrics to assess algorithm performance over time. Users of AFDD technology need this information to proactively focus operation and maintenance (O&M) efforts on high-return activities and to build the business case for adoption of AFDD solutions.

Contacts

DOE Technology Manager: Erika Gupta
Lead Performer: Jessica Granderson, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

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