Case Study Evaluation of HVAC Energy Use Resulting from a Room Usage Calendar-Based HVAC Scheduling Tool

Building schedulers need to ensure their facilities are used efficiently. To avoid space conflicts and allow multiple users to reserve spaces, a variety of room-usage calendars are utilized across different occupants. This information may be leveraged in building automation systems (BAS) to adjust space conditioning schedules, resulting in energy and cost reduction. In this study, a room usage calendar-based heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) scheduling (RUSch) tool was implemented on the 3rd floor of an institutional building on Appalachian State University’s campus. The purpose of this study was to monitor localized energy flows related to implementation of the RUSch tool. Data were collected from trend logs, local weather stations, and dedicated instrumentation. Thermal and electrical energy flows for the affected zones were projected from measured HVAC air data. Air handler fan electrical energy was measured and evaluated separately from thermal energy. The analysis looked at total energy reductions as well as how energy consumption related to day-of-week, outside temperature, and frequency of room use. For this study, room-specific energy flows were generally reduced by approximately 40% in total and 26% on weekdays on top of the energy saved by the default HVAC system scheduling. One notable benefit of the RUSch technique in this case is that it allowed operations staff to reduce air handler energy throughout the zones while ensuring comfort conditions for all scheduled events regardless of normal operational hours. This initial case study sheds light on some value in characterizing comfort zones for usage profiles and usage frequency to help decision makers better project the savings and value of implementing a room usage calendar-based HVAC scheduling tool.

This article was originally published in the 国际能源管理杂志 (IJEM Vol. 6, Iss. 4)by Jasmine Garland, Andrew Windham, Ph.D. and Patrick Richardson. Read the full article 这里.