Facility Energy Management via a Commercial Web Service Michael R. Brambley (
[email protected]) Srinivas Katipamula (
[email protected]) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory1, Richland, Washington Patrick O’Neill (
[email protected]) NorthWrite Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota Abstract The World Wide Web (the Web) is rapidly transforming many business practices. The purpose of this chapter is to show readers how facility management tools provided by application service providers (ASPs) via the Web may represent a simple, cost-effective solution to their facility and energy management problems. All participants in the management of a facility, from building operations staff to tenants, can get convenient access to information and tools to meet their needs more effectively by simply using a web browser and an Internet connection. Further, energy tools that are integrated into these facility management software environments become readily accessible and can be linked to other tools for managing work orders for getting energy-wasting problems fixed. The chapter also describes how the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) is working to make such energy tools readily available. Introduction The World Wide Web is transforming the way business is done. Just a decade ago, most documents requiring immediate transfer between different geographic locations were sent via overnight delivery service. With the Web and its services (such as email), documents can be shared continents away in a matter of minutes or seconds. No longer do collaborators or business partners need to wait days, weeks or months to review, make revisions, or execute documents. Consumer-to-business and business-to-business purchase orders, once decided upon, can be placed over the Web in seconds. These are two of the many transactions that the Web has transformed and continues to transform. Our use of software has been somewhat slower to change. Most of the software applications used in business are installed separately on individual computer workstations. There are some exceptions to this practice, but they still represent the small minority of software installations today. The consequences of this include collaborators with incompatible files, the need to disseminate and install bug and security patches on every computer (sometimes thousands or even millions) on which an application is installed, loss of data whenever an individual disk crashes that was not backed up regularly, and other difficulties associated with trying to manage interactions across software applications on many different machines.
1
Operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by Battelle Memorial Institute under contract DE-AC0676RL01830.
Electronic access to software from dedicated providers, called application service providers (or ASPs), presents an alternative. This chapter describes the emerging availability of software tools for facility management (FM) via the Web, how energy management can benefit from this delivery mechanism and integration with other webenabled FM tools, and some specific tools for managing energy use that are available now and others currently under development. The Application Service Provider (ASP) Model Application service providers provide access to software via subscriptions. For the payment of a subscription fee, users obtain access to software on the World Wide Web using nothing more than a web browser to access it. An example of an ASP for facility management is shown in Figure 1. The software needs to be installed on only one computer, the web server, rather than on the individual workstation of every user. To provide reliability, the software is typically installed on several redundant servers to provide backup in case a server fails. Many users are then able to access a small number of installed copies of the software. User files are also maintained on the ASP’s servers and backed-up in a similar manner. This service delivery model enables a large set of software applications to be provided to many users at a site, without requiring a large onsite computer support organization. Keeping the applications up and running is the responsibility of the ASP, as are backing up data and installing patches and software upgrades. When software is upgraded, every user gets immediate access to the upgrades; there is no delay or time required for upgrades to get distributed, acquired and installed. These functions need not be provided by the end user organization. They are handled by the ASP. Facility management ASPs can provide a complete suite of tools for facility management: asset tracking, communications, alarms and notifications, maintenance management, work order management, utility tracking, bill management, project management, and benchmarking tools. In addition, the environment provided by the ASP can provide convenient access to weather data, customized news, and online directories. Under the appropriate licensing agreements, ASP tools can integrate work activities and communications of key participants within facilities (see Figure 2) through their computers, personal digital assistants, or pagers. Building occupants can enter requests for work directly into a work order management system. All work orders can be prioritized and assigned to building staff or contractors automatically, or by a dispatcher to whom that duty is assigned. Repair staff and contractors receive work orders for which they are responsible directly through the system. They can then report progress of the job and completion when it is done. If parts are required for repairs, vendors can also be integrated into the system so orders are placed, acknowledged, and status of delivery provided via the system directly to the parties affected. Such a system can effectively integrate all parties with an interest in the facility and keep them informed. Each type of user is given access to the tools necessary to carry out their job functions.
Many users at a site can have access to the software. Each user can have unique privileges to specific sets of tools. A financial manager, for example, would have privileges to a different set of tools than a building operator. For a campus of buildings or a company with buildings at many different sites, the management of diverse buildings can be monitored from a central location. Many of these capabilities are available from software systems known as enterprise applications. Generally these are comprehensive tool suites installed on computers at the facilities (e.g., on a campus) and adapted to the unique needs of the site. These systems generally are licensed up-front for a fee and may be supported by a purchased maintenance contract. Often these systems are installed on a site server owned by the customer, and client software is installed on the personal workstations of each user of the system. These systems provide essentially the same capabilities as a suite of FM tools provided by an ASP. The primary differences are: 1) customers generally must provide their own computer support staff for maintaining the server and any backup systems, 2) the software license fee is incurred up front at the time of “purchase,” 3) client software is generally installed on user workstations, and 4) software upgrades are made when purchased for the site (if not covered by a software maintenance or technical support contract) and installed on the site server. In some cases, enterprise FM systems can be set up as a web server. These systems can be accessed via a web browser, just like tools from an ASP, and can be installed on a site server or for a fee by a generic ASP service provider. The key benefits of an FM tool suite provided by an ASP are: • Low cost to subscribe, which can often be covered by an operating budget instead of a capital budget—no license fee—sometimes no long term agreement required • Software maintenance and upgrades handled by the ASP • Server hardware maintenance handled by the ASP—no on-site information technology support required • Immediate access to software upgrades as they become available • Compatibility among all users because everyone is operating on the same version of the software—eliminating file compatibility issues, organizational procedural variations, and training problems caused by version differences across an enterprise. Why Integrate Energy Tools into a Facility Management Environment? A survey of 250 customers by NorthWrite Inc.2 showed that facility managers devote 5 to 6% of their time to issues associated with utilities. This includes electricity, gas, and thermal energy (e.g., district heat) but also water, sewer, garbage collection, telephones, and others. They found that less than 1% of a facility manager’s time on average is spent on electricity-related activities (see Figure 3). In contrast to the small fraction of time devoted by facility mangers to utilities and energy, utility expenses represent about 34% of total facility purchases globally (see Figure 4). 2
An unpublished survey by NorthWrite Inc. of customers. NorthWrite Inc., Minneapolis, MN.
Why is there such a discrepancy between the costs of utilities and the time facility managers spend on this building expense? If you have ever spent time in a facility manager’s office you will quickly understand. Their phone is constantly ringing, they get emails, pages, and faxes every 5 minutes, and people are constantly stopping at their door to let them know about the latest issue, problem, or “emergency” that requires their immediate attention. They may have come to work that morning with the intention of looking at their latest utility bills to identify opportunities for savings, but that desire is quickly displaced by the daily demands of their job. When quitting time comes, they find that another day has gone by where they just didn’t have time to think about their utility expenses. Another issue has been the fact that energy tools are generally provided as stand-alone software. Although they can be part of a user’s computer desktop environment, they still generally require separate purchase, installation, maintenance, and initiation to be used. Some innovative ASP’s are now starting to provide energy tools that are seamlessly integrated with the other FM tools that the facility manager uses every day (e.g. Work Order Management, Preventive Maintenance, Project Management, etc). By placing energy tools along side these other FM applications, these ASP’s believe that energy tools will become more accessible to the facility manager and hence, used more. Furthermore, many facility managers are still doing many of their tasks manually or are using software tools that are little more than bookkeeping aids. By employing the new generation of ASP-based FM software, facility managers should be able to perform their duties more efficiently, enabling them to reallocate more of their effort to energy and other utility issues, thus bringing both time spent and dollars spent closer to congruence. Because nearly all facilities have significant opportunities to improve the operating efficiency of their systems, energy tools should lead facility management to those opportunities and, therefore, improved efficiency in their buildings. Integrating energy tools into a web-based facility management system helps accomplish this. For small buildings, a web-based approach may be especially important. Small commercial buildings often do not have a dedicated manager on site. Several of these buildings might be managed by a facility management firm. Tools are needed to keep facility-management staff informed of conditions in each building. This information can come from two sources: 1) occupants of the building and 2) automatically collected data. In both cases, data must be transmitted to a convenient central location where facilitymanagement staff can easily access it and review the status of each building. A webbased facility-management system that integrates not only traditional stakeholders but also building occupants provides a mechanism by which occupants’ reports of problems and needs can be readily identified and addressed. Other data from sensors in the building must come from building automation systems (BASs) or stand-alone monitoring devices or sensor networks. Monitoring and diagnostic tools for building systems are available that can be integrated with web-based facility management software systems but very few are commercially
offered. Monitoring tools hosted by an ASP have the advantage of economies of scale for set up and operation of data communication. Data from many distributed sites can all be sent to the ASP servers, processed by tools in the facility-management systems, and the results made available to users including automated email or paging notification for critical alarms. Economies for installation and operation exist for the ASP because it serves the needs of many customers with the same generic, essentially turn-key, monitoring systems. In the next section we provide two examples of how ASP’s are providing a combination of energy and FM tools to their customers. Some Examples Electric Utility Providing Energy Services as an ASP Utilities have been providing energy management services to their customers for decades and have experimented with many different delivery mechanisms. What has emerged as the preferred approach is via the Web. One of many examples is Portland General Electric’s (PGE3) “E-Manager” energy information service. E-Manager enables their customers to view and analyze their 15-minute interval electric consumption data on a monthly, daily, or near real-time basis. E-Manager replaced a legacy workstation-based software service that had been the source of significant problems for both PGE and its customers. With the old system, there had been continual difficulties in getting the meter data to the customers. Desktop software support was also something that the utility was not especially proficient at, and there were many problems with software versioning, hardware system incompatibility, and training. PGE had to choose between finding a more sustainable delivery model and dropping the program altogether. The utility decided to adopt a new energy information service delivered using an ASP model. Since moving to an ASP, about 1/3 of PGE’s largest customers have subscribed to the E-Manager program, and the utility considers it to be a highly successful example of applying the right technology approach to real customer needs. PGE has also begun offering a more comprehensive set of FM services (e.g., work order management, preventive maintenance, project management, etc.) in an effort to address more of the facility manager’s day-to-day needs. Facility Management ASP Another example of web-delivered services is NorthWrite’s4 ASP offering for facility management. One of their customers, St. Paul College manages a campus of buildings using NorthWrite’s FM “WorkSite.” This web service features standard FM software for managing work orders, preventive maintenance, documents, etc. However, it is unique in that there are also a number of energy management tools. St. Paul College tracks and assigns work orders, makes sure their equipment is properly maintained and manages their energy consumption all using the same set of software tools. They use their WorkSite to track utility bills, baseline their buildings against the U.S. Department of 3 4
http://www.portlandgeneral.com/business/products/emanager/Default.asp?bhcp=1 http://www.northwrite.com
Energy’s (DOE’s) Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey [2], identify up to 300 energy savings measures, and analyze 15-minute electric and gas consumption data. Having all these tools in one “place” means that sophisticated energy management tools are only one mouse-click away. United Properties (UP), a large, progressive property/facility management company located in the Midwest, provides another useful example of value attained by use of facility management tools from an ASP. This company manages a 26 million square foot portfolio of commercial and industrial facilities and utilizes NorthWrite’s WorkSite program to manage the day-to-day operations at many of its building locations. UP also uses several energy-related tools within its WorkSite to track the energy usage of its client’s facilities. Recently, a United Properties facility manager noticed that one of his clients, a private college, had been receiving unusually large electric bills. Using the Energy Benchmarking Tool, he was able to spot that the facility was using significantly more energy than usual and discovered that his client was actually being charged for construction electricity that should have been paid by the new building’s contractor. As a result of its NorthWrite usage, United Properties was able to recover more than $30,000 for its client. Merging energy and facility management tools has a deeper, less obvious advantage. Often, energy savings are achieved through implementing a large number of operational changes within your facilities. Integrating energy and FM functionality means that many of these changes can be the result of automatically generated work orders that are created based on unusual consumption or demand characteristics. If larger capital improvements or retrofits are called for, project management, labor tracking, and procurement tools (also a part of a comprehensive FM ASP service) can be used to manage and implement these projects. Emerging Web-Based Energy Tools Central collection and processing of data from many remote sites creates the opportunity to use a myriad of tools to extract information from the data. The cost of the software applications and maintaining the application servers can be spread over the facilities of all users, reducing costs per facility. Centralized monitoring also enables facilities and service providers to hire expert HVAC engineers and analysts to analyze several buildings rather than one or a few, and these experts can do their analyses remotely. A number of new tools that will provide better information about the energy performance of building systems and operating costs have just been or are now being developed. Discussions of several of these follow. Remote Automated Diagnostics For decades, building automation systems (also known as energy management and control systems, building management system, etc.) have provided the ability for building operators to log and graph data points over time. Unfortunately, these systems generally have required that users set up the trending of variables of interest and then view and interpret trends in the data to identify equipment faults, performance degradation, and
opportunities for performance improvement. This requires that the building staff have time to set up and periodically review the trends as well as have the knowledge or experience to interpret them. Furthermore, understanding the condition of equipment and systems often requires tracking changes in several variables simultaneously to detect a fault and then to diagnose it, making the task unwieldy for all but those most experienced at this type of analysis. Because of this, most operators tend to neglect much of the information provided by these systems. They just don’t have enough time to do the urgent work and still analyze these data. A new class of tools that is starting to emerge for practical use has been under development for a decade or more (see, for example, references [3] and [4]). These tools, known as automated fault detection and diagnostics, take data from equipment and systems, analyze it, and interpret it to provide easy-to-understand, actionable information. Most of these tools don’t distract users with raw measurements, only providing them when requested by a user. Instead, they provide conclusions that can be acted on, such as “the actuator for the mixing damper in Air Handler 5 is not operating” or “Outdoor Air Sensor 8 has failed, is providing no reading, and should be replaced.” This information is often presented in alarms to building staff, so only the alarms need to be monitored, not the raw data trends. Periodic reviews of data trends are not required; they are done continuously by the automated diagnostic tools. Effective use of diagnostic tools can help facility managers and operators cut the cost of operations and consumption of resources while improving the comfort and the safety of occupants. Continuous diagnostics for building systems and equipment will help remedy many problems associated with inefficient operation by automatically and continuously detecting system performance problems and bringing them to the attention of building operators. [5] Some of these problems might otherwise go undetected. Advanced diagnostic tools can even suggest causes of problems, make recommendations for solving problems, and estimate the cost of not solving a problem. The value of this technology is evident in the findings of researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who found in applying an automated diagnostic tool for air-handling units on buildings at several locations that 32 out of 32 air handlers checked had existing faults. The estimated annual costs of these problems ranged from $130 to $16,000 (see Table 1). [6] Access to data in real-time has been and continues to be a major obstacle to widespread deployment of remote automated diagnostic tools. The application service provider model described in this chapter helps overcome that problem and should make application of automated fault detection and diagnostics easier than it has been in the past. Tracking Energy End-Uses Because energy accounts for a significant portion of the operating cost in many facilities, facility managers, energy service providers, and owners alike will benefit from software tools that track energy end-use. For example, the benefits for an owner of a retail chain or a facility manager of a large campus with distributed facilities include:
• • •
ability to generate reports in several different formats (e.g., by region, sales volume, or building type), ability to benchmark historical, normalized (e.g., with respect to weather, size, or sales) end-use consumption between similar facilities. Comparison with benchmarks can help identify operational inefficiencies. ability to forecast energy budgets and prepare energy purchasing plans.
An energy service provider who has signed a guaranteed savings (i.e., performance) contract with a facility can reduce risk and increase reliability by tracking end-use consumption and calculating savings continuously. From a central location, the energy service provider or facilities personnel can also identify problems associated with unscheduled operation of equipment (such as lights and HVAC equipment) because of control malfunctions or errant programming. The early developers of software tools for tracking savings often used special data logging equipment coupled with low bandwidth phone lines for communication – a cumbersome application. Application service providers can take this burden off individual building owners by collecting, analyzing, formatting, and displaying energyuse data more easily for a single building or several. Real savings from energy conservation measures can then be compared easily with estimates from engineers, contractors, and operators. An example display from an energy tracking tool is shown in Figure 5. On the screen, the different major energy end-uses are shown by lines of differing colors. The interface for this tool quickly conveys excess consumption using enlarged data points. Additional information can be obtained simply by clicking the computer mouse with the cursor positioned over the point for which more information is desired. The system then provides the user additional information in a new display window (see Figure 6) including the amount of excess energy used, the normally expected range of consumption, and the cost of the excess consumption. The analysis of tracked data, normalization for factors such weather conditions and occupancy schedules, and interpretation of numerical results are all accomplished by the tracking tool itself, so that users can quickly access the information they need. Load Aggregation The electric power grid failure in the northeastern U.S. on August 14, 2003, made the limitations of the electric power grid painfully evident to the government, the electric power industry, and even the public. [7] The need to change how the grid is operated is acknowledged more today than ever before. In the future, customers are more likely to see electricity prices tied directly to the time-varying cost of producing and transmitting electricity. During times of peak consumption (often mid-to-late afternoon on a daily basis and during extremely hot or cold weather on an annual basis), customers are likely to experience much higher prices than during periods of low use (in the middle of the night and during mild weather).
In such a market, electric customers are likely to be able to negotiate more favorable utility rates, as well as control their electric demand, by aggregating loads across their facilities. This requires tracking of aggregated loads as well as the demand profiles of individual buildings whether they be at a single site or distributed across many locations. By centrally collecting and analyzing consumption data from meters and control networks, individual loads can be managed across many buildings to ensure aggregated compliance with electric-contract requirements. By aggregating real-time data across buildings, facility managers can identify where to curtail energy use when demand approaches a negotiated limit, insulating them from high peak prices. Whole-Facility Cost Management One of the greatest potential cost-savings opportunities for facility managers and operators lies in the ability to control and optimize whole-facility energy consumption. Utilities are beginning to offer rates that vary by hour-of-day and day-of-week using realtime pricing and time-of-use rates. To take advantage of time-varying rates, facilities need advanced control strategies. [8] Strategies include: HVAC load shedding (for chillers, thermal storage, supply and zone temperatures, fans, and pumps); load shifting (using pre-cooling or thermal storage); and fuel shifting (gas, oil, and steam standby generators). [9] These strategies not only require centralized access to data from sensors and meters but also the ability to control equipment from a central location. In addition to the energy charge, most of today’s electric rate structures also have a demand charge that can be as high as $25 per KW or more. In some cases, the peak period is tied to the utility’s system-wide peak. In such a case, predicting the systemwide peak and implementing the load-control measures during a 2- or 3-hour window surrounding the anticipated time of the peak can save a large facility a very large demand charge. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) developed a sophisticated software tool for naval bases in San Diego. The tool calculates the probability that any particular day’s system peak will be the monthly system peak. The tool uses short-term (today), medium-term (1 week), and long-term (30-day) weather forecasts, as well as a baseline model of the utility’s loads system-wide. All weather data are collected over the Internet for the analysis. Facility managers and energy service providers can optimize whole facilities using such sophisticated software tools, if the required data are available. Application service providers could provide access to these tools as well as the infrastructure for running them and storing data at a lower cost than each individual facility could. Federal-Sector Leadership The DOE’s Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) is currently working with a private contractor to web enable two energy-focused diagnostic tools previously developed under DOE funding to make them available as part of ASP-offered web-based facility management systems. The first tool provides the capability to monitor energy use, automatically identify anomalies in energy use after adjusting for the influence of factors such as variations in weather or activity in a facility over time, and then alert facility staff with alarms. Essentially any energy use for which a meter is or can be installed can be monitored with this tool. This includes the electricity use of an entire
building or campus, the electricity or fuel use for an entire HVAC system, or even the fuel use of an individual boiler or the electricity use of an individual packaged HVAC unit. By having this tool monitor energy end uses and automatically alert facility staff to high or low levels of energy use, problems with equipment scheduling or performance can be identified long before they might be otherwise. By accounting for weather and other factors that affect energy use, changes caused by underlying factors such as the performance degradation of equipment or override of a schedule are much more easily and reliably detected than by monitoring raw energy data. The tool also automatically analyzes energy use and detects anomalies with consumption so the time of building personnel is not needed to manually review data and visually detect anomalies. The second tool automatically detects and diagnoses faults with air-handling equipment. This includes both built-up air handlers primarily found in large buildings and package HVAC units, which serve the many small commercial buildings. This tool detects and identifies potential causes of three generic types of operation problems with these systems: 1) excessive energy consumption, 2) inadequate ventilation, which causes deterioration of indoor air quality, and 3) sensor faults and other control problems. Energy problems can result from improper schedules (e.g., a temporary schedule change that is implemented but never reset to its initial values), improperly implemented controls (improperly-controlled outdoor-air dampers), or physical failure of equipment (e.g., a broken damper-actuation linkage that prevents modulation of the damper). These are a few of the more than 100 specific faults that this tool can detect. [10] Results are provided to the user graphically (Figure 7) so they can be reviewed quickly, using little of a building operator’s time. If a fault persists, the user interface provides a simple mousedriven interface to access additional details of the fault and potential remedies for it (see Figure 8). A key characteristic of this tool is that it does not simply provide plots of data, but interprets data to provide easy-to-understand information on which building staff can act. In web enabling this tool, the FEMP team seeks to further simplify the interface to streamline use and provide building operators and managers with key information for decision making literally at their fingertips. By making results from these energy-focused tools conveniently available as part of a facility management environment, FEMP hopes to reduce the effort required of building staff to recognize and correct problems that increase energy use and might go undetected for months or even years without these tools. Although FEMP’s focus is on helping Federal-sector facilities, once these tools are integrated into the web-based FM system, they will become available commercially to all potential users. Data Gathering Issues Software tools that perform energy analysis require monitored interval data (periodic data collected at a regular frequency—e.g., every 15 minutes). If the site has interval meters, access to utility end-use consumption data can come directly from the utilities,. Otherwise, end-use monitoring is necessary to collect the data, which then must be transmitted to the ASP. In addition, data from building automation systems (BASs) is needed for detailed diagnosis of equipment performance. Although the data can be
collected using existing BASs, this is not always easy and the success of data collection varies widely depending on the type of BAS and its support of standard protocols. Furthermore, less than 10% of the commercial buildings have BASs. [2] Lack of adequate sensors to monitor performance of building systems is also another major stumbling block. Widespread deployment of energy software tools hosted by ASPs will require low-cost sensors, reliable automated data collection, reliable low-cost communications to push the data from the building to the ASP server, and software tools that can be hosted by an ASP. Some ASPs are starting to market creative approaches to data collection that include the use of wireless networks to transmit the information back to their servers without requiring phone lines or connecting to their customers’ intranets. We anticipate significant innovation in this area as increased customer demand drives ASPs to provide low-cost, reliable data monitoring services. Conclusions The World Wide Web provides a convenient and very cost-effective delivery mechanism for FM software. The ASP model shows promise for enabling well-managed facility management over a broad range of building sizes and business paradigms. It is generally cheaper than traditional software, reduces the information technology (IT) support burden on users, and brings additional features like the ability to network all the key participants in operating and maintaining buildings. Integration of FM and energy tools shows promise as a way to make these tools more accessible to the facility manager. ASPs that provide a comprehensive suite of FM and energy tools enable users to more efficiently address a missing element of their cost of operations. Furthermore, by performing FM tasks more efficiently, facility managers will have more time to spend on proactively managing utility costs. As more energy management and analysis software tools are developed and deployed by ASPs, building managers, facility operators, and energy service providers will gain access to more sophisticated and automated software tools that will enable them to manage distributed facilities more efficiently. These advances will provide better controls capability, enhance operation and maintenance by providing automated remote diagnostics, support predictive condition-based maintenance, help verify performance contracts, increase productivity, allow better integration and use of sensors, actuators and controllers, improve overall energy management, and lower facility management costs.
References 1. Building Owners & Managers Association International (BOMA). 1998. 1998 Experience Exchange Report. BOMA, Washington, D.C.
2. Energy Information Administration (EIA). 1995. 1995 Commercial Building Energy Consumption and Expenditures (CBECS), Public Use Data, Micro-data files are available on the EIA website: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cbecs/microdat.html. 3. Honeywell. 2003. “The HVAC Service Assistant.” Honeywell Home and Building Controls, Golden Valley, Minnesota. Available on the World Wide Web at http://customer.honeywell.com/buildings/CBWPServiceAssistant.asp. 4. Friedman, H. and M. A. Piette. 2001. “Comparison of Emerging Diagnostic Tools for Large Commercial HVAC Systems.” In Proceedings of the 9th National Conference on Building Commissioning, Portland Energy Conservation Inc., Portland, Oregon. 5. Brambley, M. R., R. G. Pratt, D. P. Chassin, and S. Katipamula. 1999. “Use of Automated Tools for Building Commissioning.” In Proceedings of the 7th National Conference on Building Commissioning, Portland Energy Conservation Inc., Portland, Oregon. 6. Katipamula, S., M.R. Brambley, N.N. Bauman, and R.G. Pratt. 2003. "Enhancing Building Operations through Automated Diagnostics: Field Test Results." In Proceedings of the Third International Conference for Enhanced Building Operations. Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. 7. U.S-Canada Power System Task Force. 2004. Final Report on the August 14, 2003 Blackout in the United States and Canada: Causes and Recommendations. Government of the United States and Canadian Government. Available on the World Wide Web at https://reports.energy.gov/BlackoutFinal-Web.pdf. 8. Kammerud, R.C., S.L. Blanc, and W.F. Kane. 1996. “The Impact of Real-Time Pricing of Electricity on Energy Use, Energy Cost, and Operation of a Major Hotel.” In Proceedings of the ACEEE 1996 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, Washington D.C. 9. O’Neill P. 1998. “Opening up the Possibilities.” Engineered Systems, Vol. 15, No. 6. 10. Katipamula, S., M.R. Brambley and L. Luskay. 2002. “Automated Proactive Techniques for Commissioning Air-Handling Units,” Journal of Solar Energy Engineering, 125:282-291. Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) for partially supporting preparation of this chapter and the research upon which it is based.
About the Authors Michael R. Brambley, Ph.D. Michael manages the Building Systems Program at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), where his work focuses on developing and deploying technology to increase the energy efficiency of buildings and other energy using systems. His primary research thrusts in recent years have been in development and application of automated fault detection and diagnostics and wireless sensing and control. He has been with PNNL for nearly 17 years before which he was an Assistant Professor in the Engineering School at Washington University in St. Louis. Michael is the author of more than 60 peer-reviewed technical publications and numerous research project reports. He holds M.S. (1978) and Ph.D. (1981) degrees from the University of California, San Diego, and the B.S. (1976) from the University of Pennsylvania. He is an active member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) for which he has served on technical committees for Computer Applications and Smart Building Systems. He has been the organizer of numerous seminars and symposia at ASHRAE’s semi-annual meetings and is a member of ASHRAE’s Program Committee. In addition to several other professional organizations, Michael is also a member of the Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society (ISA) and Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Srinivas Katipamula, Ph.D. Srinivas Katipamula got his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 1985 and 1989, respectively, from Texas A&M University. He has been working as a Sr. Research Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in Richland, WA, since January 2002. He managed the Analytics Group at the Enron Energy Services for 2 years (2000 through 2001). Before joining EES, he worked at PNNL for 6 years and prior to that he worked for the Energy Systems Lab at the Texas A&M University from 1989 to 1994. He has authored or co-authored over 60 technical publications, over 25 research reports, and made several presentations at national and international conferences. He has recently written a chapter on Building Systems Diagnostics and Predictive Maintenance for CRC Handbook on HVAC. He is an active member of both ASHRAE and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Patrick J. O’Neill, Ph.D. Chief Operating Officer Patrick co-founded NorthWrite, and leads corporate operations. Before joining NorthWrite, Patrick spent 10 years at Honeywell International, where he most recently served as Vice President of Technology and Development for e-Business. Patrick defined technology strategy, prioritized developments, allocated resources, and operated the infrastructure for Honeywell’s stand-alone e-ventures. Patrick also co-founded and acted as Chief Technology Officer for Honeywell’s myFacilities.com, an application service provider targeting the facility management and
service contracting industries. Previously, Patrick was Director of Development for Honeywell’s Solutions and Service business, managing global product research and development worldwide, with development teams in the U.S., Australia, India, and Germany. Before joining Honeywell, Patrick worked at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Patrick is a member of numerous professional organizations including ASHRAE, where he has held leadership positions in the Computer Applications, Controls, and Smart Building Systems Technical Committees. He has written and published many articles on software, systems and controls, and building operations and management.
Published by special permission of the Fairmont Press. November 15, 2004. Association of Energy Engineers, 4025 Pleasantdale Road, Suite 420, Atlanta, GA 30340
Applications Service Provider (ASP) Advantages of ASP
9Continuous updates of software 9Everyone uses same software version 9Economies of Scale (Much Less Expensive) 9Infrastructure Requirements: ¾ Internet Connection ¾ PC with a Browser (Modem) ¾ Limited On-site IT Support Required
Hosting Architecture
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Figure 1. Diagram showing the basic ASP model and its advantages.
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Figure 2. The network of participants created by a highly integrated facility management software suite where all stakeholders are connected.
Planning and forecasting Reporting
Policies and procedures Staffing Safety
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Maintenance and Operations
Purchases
Space Planning Asset Management
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Electrical Utilities Training Meetings
Project Management & Administration
Figure 3. Proportions of time devoted to facility management tasks. Source: NorthWrite Inc. unpublished survey, 2002.
Security 3%
Administrative 16%
Cleaning 19%
Roads/Grounds 8% Repair & Maintance 20% Utilities 34%
Figure 4. Fractions of $1.2 trillion of annual purchases by facilities globally. Data source: 1998 BOMA Experience Exchange Report. (1)
Figure 5. Main display for a representative energy tracking tool.
Figure 6. Pop-up window that provides more detail about excess energy use on a particular day, obtained by clicking on an enlarged data point for the specific day of interest in Figure 5.
Figure 7. The user interface for the air-handling diagnostic tool. The actual user interface uses color to indicate whether a fault occurred and the type of fault for each hour of operation (white indicates no faults were detected). Each column represents a day with each cell representing a specific hour of day. Red cells, which identify hours during which an excessive use of energy occurred, appear as black cells in this figure. The slightly lighter gray cells identify hours during which the diagnosis was incomplete. The large number of red cells between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. every day except Sunday indicates a persistent fault that is causing energy waste.
Air Handler, Date and Time Current Conditions Impacts Potential Causes Suggested Actions Figure 8. A pop-up window revealed by clicking on a cell in Figure 7 provides detailed information on the fault identified by the air-handling diagnostic tool.
Table 1. Summary of air handling faults and their cost impacts for 32 air handlers monitored with an automated air-handler diagnostic tool. (6) Number of Air Handlers
Annual Cost Impact ($)
Temperature sensor
7
*
Supply-air control
2
2000
Scheduling
2
130 to 700
Not fully economizing
10
115 to 16,000
Excess ventilation
9
250 to 12,000
Inadequate ventilation
2
**
Stuck damper
2
Mis-calibrated sensor
1
Fault
0 to 4000 *
* Improperly operating sensors prevent estimation of energy and cost impacts. **Inadequate outdoor-air ventilation has not direct cost impacts but may affect occupants comfort, health and productivity.
