Best-in-Class: Demonstrating Scalable Operational Efficiency through Optimized Controls Sequences and Plug-and-Play Solutions
This project demonstrated the potential for cost effective building energy savings through advanced HVAC control system retrofits, with an average of 31% HVAC energy savings in simulations and savings of up to 60% in field demonstrations.
Taylor Engineering
Recipient
Piedmont, CA
Recipient Location
9th
Senate District
14th
Assembly District
$2,905,303
Amount Spent
Completed
Project Status
Project Result
Project is complete, including installations of optimized controls at all demonstration sites, commissioning installed systems, and collecting data. The final report was published on the CEC website in late 2022. The results indicate whole building electricity savings of 10-25% can be achieved by the proposed technology.
The Issue
Typically, energy upgrade efforts focus on equipment replacement, which often have high costs. Updating the controls for existing systems to operate more efficiently presents a prime opportunity to achieve cost-effective savings. However, the current upgrade model presents a barrier for building owners and operators to effectively scale installation of advanced controls due to high transaction costs and the need for custom analysis and programming. This project aims to demonstrate large-scale HVAC and lighting control upgrades across a portfolio of building types that achieve energy savings while reducing transaction costs.
Project Innovation
This demonstration optimizes and simplifies control upgrades (HVAC and lighting) that achieve energy savings while also improving occupant comfort by using automated fault detection and diagnostics, continuous commissioning, and advanced measurement and verification procedures. The team will use the results to develop recommendations for strategies, tools, and initiatives to address market barriers and promote large scale market adoption.
Project Goals
Project Benefits
This project facilitates increased market adoption of control system retrofits that result in significant energy savings in commercial buildings. The successful demonstration of scalable, plug-and-play integrated packages of HVAC and lighting controls will allow commercial building owners and operators to maximize energy savings across large portfolios of buildings while reducing transaction costs.
Affordability
Deploying a simplified approach to achieving sustained operational savings of HVAC and lighting can reduce costs for building owners and operators and has the potential to increase market adoption. In addition, integrating measures into single installations can yield building electricity savings of up to 25% while reduce overall project costs and payback periods.
Consumer Appeal
The demonstrated value proposition has consumer appeal which includes energy savings and improved occupant comfort.
Key Project Members
Hwakong Cheng
Subrecipients
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Integral Group, Inc.
TRC Engineers, Inc.
Match Partners
Trane U.S., Inc.
United States Department of Energy
Automated Logic Corporation
Siemens Corporation, Corporate Technology
Kaiser Permanente National Facilities Services
Enlighted Inc.
Delos
KGS Buildings
Alerton
