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Facility Dynamics implemented a constant commissioning program
for a government agency. This project features our PACRAT software.
This government agency's program manager and his staff coined the phrase "Data to Dollars" for this continuous commissioning program. We started with 32 air handlers in their main operations facility. We expanded it to another approximately 60 air handlers in four buildings as well as to 30 chillers in 10 chilled water plants (some of which are networked) and we continue to expand the program.
As this project is on the cutting edge of technology, there has been much interest in the results. Below is a summary of PACRAT found:
PACRAT identified approximately $260,000 of energy waste in approximately 1.2 million square foot of occupied space. Approximately $70,000 was due to operation during the unoccupied.
As a result of PACRATs performance characterization facilities,
this agency was able to avoid $800,000 of construction cost (their numbers) on the renovation of this facility by allowing more accurate projections as to space loads.
Here are some specific examples of anomalies that PACRAT identified:
- PACRAT identified a significant energy waste resulting from what it termed a "leaking" chilled water valve. Upon investigation, we found that several 8-13 psig chilled water valves actuators had been replaced with 3-15 psig actuators, yet the program had not been changed to reflect the change. Therefore the valves never closed. Since the reheat simply compensated, nobody ever noticed.
- PACRAT identified several air handlers that were oscillating from heating to cooling due to return control loops set too tight.
- PACRAT identified OA shaft balancing problems as it identified excess air on air handlers on the upper floors, and lack of outside air on the lower floors.
- PACRAT identified over-simplistic programming that was allowing significant simultaneous cooling and heating. This resulted from mixed air setpoints being higher than cooling coil setpoints. In many cases this resulted in not only a lack of economizer operation, but also in unnecessary operation of the outdoor air preheat coil which then fought the cooling coil.
- PACRAT identified several failed dampers and actuators. Some were simply broken, others were manually defeated.
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Facility Dynamics implemented a constant commissioning program for this large pharmaceutical company. We initially implemented this on 10 different air handlers in 8 buildings. We then expanded the program to 8 hydronic, one in each building. One interesting aspect of this installation is the extensive assessment that Wes Reeves of Abbott Laboratories did of PACRAT. He specifically checked out every identified anomaly and authored an internal paper relative to the accuracy of PACRAT. He quantified the accuracy as
- In over 92% of the cases, there was something wrong that was easily determinable with the information PACRAT provided.
- In over 85% of the cases, PACRAT identified exactly what was wrong.
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