Commercial, Energy Efficiency - June 30, 2017

DOE: At potential, controls could slash energy use 30%

^{A control box for a commercial building's heating and cooling system is shown in this photo provided by PNNL.}

The critical impact that building controls can have on energy use when used to their full potential is the subject of a new report from the U.S. DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

If commercial buildings fully used controls nationwide, the lab found, they could cut the U.S.'s annual commercial building energy use by an average of 29%, the equivalent of what is currently used by 12 to 15 million Americans.

"Like driving a car despite a glowing check-engine light, large buildings often chug along without maintenance being performed on the building controls designed to keep them running smoothly," the lab said in a news release announcing its findings. "And sometimes those controls aren't used to their full potential, similar to a car at high speed in first gear. Instead of an expensive visit to the mechanic, the result for a commercial building is a high power bill."

The report examines how 34 different energy efficiency measures, most of which rely on various building controls, could affect energy use in commercial buildings such as stores, offices and schools. This would result in between 4 to 5 quadrillion British Thermal Units in national energy savings, which is about 4% to 5% of the energy consumed nationwide.

"Most large commercial buildings are already equipped with building automation systems that deploy controls to manage building energy use," report co-author and PNNL engineer Srinivas Katipamula said. "But those controls often aren't properly programmed and are allowed to deteriorate over time, creating unnecessarily large power bills."

The report, according to the DOE, offers the first detailed, national benefit analysis of multiple energy efficiency measures to address building operational problems.

Katipamula and his colleagues examined the potential impact of 34 individual energy efficiency measures that can improve commercial building performance, including:

Fixing broken sensors that read temperatures and other measurements
Turning off power-using devices, like printers and monitors, when a room isn't occupied
Dimming lights in areas with natural lighting
Because combining individual measures can increase energy savings, the researchers also estimated the impacts of packaging energy efficiency measures together. PNNL designed packages of combined measures based on the needs of three different building conditions: buildings already efficient and with little room for improvement, inefficient buildings with a lot of room for improvement and typical buildings in the middle.

PNNL used computer models of nine prototypical commercial buildings and extrapolated them to represent five other, similar buildings so it could evaluate energy use in a total of 14 building types. The research team used these prototypical building models with DOE's EnergyPlus building software, which calculated potential energy use given the local weather and whichever energy efficiency measures were applied.

DOE: At potential, controls could slash energy use 30%

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