According to industry analyst firm, Pike Research, buildings are responsible for 49% of global energy consumption and 47% of greenhouse emissions. And the commercial building stock will continue to grow as population and economic activity increases the need for more infrastructure and public services. Increasingly high energy costs, the economic downturn, growing competition, and government energy efficiency mandates are forcing building owners and managers to reconsider the way they manage their facilities’ operational systems. According to a recent IDC Energy Insight report (Smart Buildings Global Market Forecast) heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) typically constitutes 50% of a commercial building’s total energy usage. Optimum Energy was founded to create and market solutions that help building owners and managers optimize HVAC system operations in order to meet the economic and sustainability challenges they face.
Holistic HVAC system energy efficiency is accomplished by adhering to the Three Laws of Optimization:
First Law: You cannot optimize what you cannot measure
True optimization requires accurate real-time measurement of energy consumption and work output for each discrete piece of equipment within the plant. Without an accurate measure of energy use by each piece of equipment in the system, it is impossible to accurately predict the impact of varying conditions on the system. In addition, it is impossible to accurately vary equipment inputs to increase efficiency without understanding the implications of demand on the system and the individual pieces of equipment. Accurate real-time measurement allows an optimized system to react to changes in cooling conditions or demand immediately; not after the energy loss has already occurred. In addition, it is impossible to maintain the performance of a mechanical system if you cannot measure and compare its performance over time.
The most effective way to produce accurate information for operational decisions that will deliver consistent results uses cloud-based software and services to provide:
- Analytics, measurement and verification of savings.
- Real-Time Dynamic Commissioning™ (RTDC).
- Real-time reporting, trend analyses and optimization verification for HVAC systems.
A standardized solution is also the best way to ensure visible, reliable, and repeatable results across multiple buildings in a portfolio.
Second Law: Optimize systems, in addition to components
The total energy consumption of an HVAC system is the sum of the individual components in the facility that consume energy. If an optimization plan focuses only on installing the most efficient pieces of equipment without regard to how to maximize performance of the whole system it will be more efficient than a legacy system, but it will fail to capture the total plant peak efficiency available. Failure to capture all the potential energy efficiency made available by investments in new variable-speed high-efficiency equipment radically lowers the return on investment and reduces the positive impact of lower operating costs on future cash flow. Holistic automatic optimization of HVAC systems typically increases energy efficiency by an additional 15%-25% over new equipment alone.
Third Law: Optimization must be automatic, dynamic and continuous for maximum efficiency
Optimization needs to be a real-time dynamic process, not a static process. If it is not based on real-time inputs, it is not optimization.
Changing weather conditions, such as temperature and humidity, equipment wear and tear, and changing facility occupancy all create ever-changing cooling load requirements on a chilled water plant. If an optimization solution is not designed to adapt to a perpetually changing environment it cannot stay optimized as conditions change. A well designed optimization solution will be constantly verifying the plant’s operating conditions and cooling requirements and dynamically adapting the system’s equipment in real-time to maintain peak efficiency. Monitoring-only solutions and manual human intervention are not enough because the decision making process is designed for a specific condition. Even when a compound sequence is developed it will only be designed for 3–5 ideal operating scenarios and operate inefficiently whenever the sequences do not exactly match conditions. A dynamic sequencing solution will always adapt to conditions and obtain peak performance. The use of cloud-based software and services that provide analytics and management that enable RTDC is the most effective way to ensure a chilled water plant can respond in real-time to changing cooling load requirements caused by weather, occupancy, comfort requirements or varying process loads from data centers or manufacturing.
