The Application of Condition Based Monitoring Techniques for the Evaluation of Building Energy Performance and HVAC Health

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Abstract

Carbon emissions generated by the building sector have come under stricter limits with the amendments to Approved Document L: Conservation of Fuel and Power of the building regulations for England and Wales. Building designs are now checked to ensure that new constructions have the designed capabilities to operate with a higher standard of efficiency. However, there are currently no means of ensuring that the mandatory improvements in design and construction are actually translating into real life improvements during the actual operation of the building. Assessment methodologies such as the Display Energy Certificate are applied annually. The large interval between audits has the potential risk that poor performance may go unnoticed for prolonged periods of time. Real time assessment of energy performance that is linked to legislative requirements would aid the process of ensuring reductions in carbon emissions occur in reality. Evaluating the energy performance in real time is not a straight forward task; commercial buildings are complex nonlinear dynamic systems with a number of operating states, functions and features. These factors need to be taken into consideration for the fair appraisal of energy performance. Condition monitoring has been applied extensively to the field of machine health, in which the state of a system is determined through measuring the parameters that are indicative of its health. Within this thesis, a unique method of real time energy performance has been developed along with the implementation of two condition monitoring strategies for the purposes of state evaluation and fault detection and diagnosis. Kernel based dimensionality techniques have recently gained popularity as a means of modelling nonlinear systems. It was found that the application of nonlinear condition monitoring strategies for determination of building state was proficient in determining slow developing faults and abrupt changes in building state. However, the occurrences of non-acceptable incipient changes in state were harder to detect. Hence the state evaluation techniques were complemented with component level fault detection and diagnosis techniques. These techniques have the combined ability to address the requirement for assessing the state of operation within a building to allow for fair appraisal of the energy performance.

Keyword(s)

Commercial Buildings; Condition Monitoring; HVAC; Performance Evaluation

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