Monday, June 26, 2017: 9:45 AM-10:45 AM
Fundamentals and Applications
Chair:
Rachel Romero, P.E., NREL
This session presents three findings of how advances in technology have advanced building efficiency. Two presentations enumerate how variables in modeling a building's performance can indicate where the largest energy savings can be accomplished. The third presentation highlights how advances in robotic energy audits can increase the efficiency of existing buildings.
1 Autonomous Robotic Building Energy Audits: Demonstrated Technology and Open Challenges (LB-17-001)
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Christopher Bay, Texas A&M University |
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Trevor Terrill, Texas A&M University |
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Bryan Rasmussen, Ph.D., P.E., Texas A&M University |
Building operations are a significant consumer of energy and contributor to carbon emissions in the U.S. and around the globe. Energy audits offer significant potential in reducing building energy use by providing tailored recommendations involving equipment upgrades, operational adjustments and building recommissioning. However, energy audits are a time intensive process that requires significant experience and training. This causes high costs related to performing an audit and prevents many businesses from having an audit completed. Automating the audit process will not only reduce the cost of audits, but clients will be provided with more repeatable and accurate recommendations based on improved data collection and analysis. Previous work and the current state of the art of robotic auditing tools are discussed in this paper, followed by open challenges and future possibilities of autonomous vehicles for conducting audits.
2 First-Year Calibration of a Design Energy Model at a Medical Office Building (LB-17-002)
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Thomas Langran, P.E., Kaiser Permanente |
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Michael Weller, Glumac |
A building owner can use a realistic energy model to understand the future building’s energy performance. But what happens when the design energy model predicted energy use and the utility bills have a significant variance? Can adjusting the energy model to match the utility bill, or calibrating it, successfully identify the cause of the variance? Will this show strategies to bring the actual energy use back in line with the predicted energy use? This paper reviews the calibration effort of a Medical Office Building where the actual energy use was significantly above the predicted energy use.
3 Development of Maximum Technically Achievable Energy Targets for Commercial Buildings (RP-1651) (LB-17-003)
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Jason Glazer, P.E., GARD Analytics, Inc. |
How energy efficient can commercial and multifamily buildings become in the near future if first cost is not considered? The paper describes how building energy simulation modeling was used to try to answer this question. The first step was to assemble a list of energy efficiency measures that can be included in the design of non-residential buildings. The list included both commonly used and cutting edge energy efficiency measures with the goal of being comprehensive, at least for measures that can be modeled. Input was sought from many people to ensure that the list of measures did not exclude any important ones.