The need…
Nowadays the need to reduce energy consumption and operational costs often arises. Business owners and facility executives are always searching for the best and value-for-money solutions in order to cover these needs and also meet sustainability goals. Heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration (HVAC-R) systems are a very important sector considering that these systems typically account for 44% of commercial building’s energy consumption.
The problem…
One main problem during this procedure is that the optimization fails due to lack of stability and automation. Usually there is manual control of HVAC systems, for example many times building operators change the set point of an air-conditioning system manually when there is a very high ambient temperature but they do not set it back in the previous setup when the next day has lower cooling demand. This behaviour leads to over-coverage of the building’s air-conditioning needs and this results to a higher electrical consumption.
The solution…
In order to get the maximum efficiency while the operational costs are kept low, it is suggested to follow what we call the three laws of optimization:
1. You cannot optimize what you cannot measure. Without an accurate measure of energy use by each piece of equipment in the system, it is impossible to accurately predict and report the impact of varying conditions on the system.
2. Optimize systems, not just individual components. If an optimization plan focuses only on installing the most efficient pieces of equipment without considering how to maximize performance of the whole system, it won’t capture the total available system efficiency. Holistic automatic optimization of HVAC systems typically increases energy efficiency by an additional 10 to 25 percent over just installing new equipment.
3. Optimization must be automatic, dynamic and continuous for maximum efficiency. Optimization should be a real-time dynamic process, not a static set-and-forget process. If a plant’s operational control is not based on real-time inputs, it cannot be fully optimized.
The conclusion…
To summarize, it is very important to create a detailed record of a building’s energy profile in order to achieve the best efficiency and the less energy consumption without sacrificing the thermal comfort.
Chrysostomos I. Bouras