The Next Frontier for Building Energy Management: Automated Continuous Commissioning

Friday, June 12th, 2009 | Energy Saving Tips, Green Buildings & Green Technology, HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency

We’ve talked with you before about building commissioning. In May we even devoted a whole post to the topic of retro-commissioning as a means of achieving greater energy efficiency.

But the story isn’t complete without a reference to the other type of commissioning that’s gaining in popularity — as much in concept as in practice, we think — which, along with retro-commissioning, seems to represent the fabled Wave of the Future.

We’re talking about Continuous Commissioning, also known as Automated Continuous Commissioning, or ACC (and yes, it’s a proper noun, because Texas A&M Energy Systems lab has trademarked the term).

DEFINING ACC

First, a definition, from the Federal Energy Management Program’s (FEMP) Continuous Commissioning Guidebook for Federal Energy Managers:

Continuous Commissioning is an ongoing process to resolve operating problems, improve comfort, optimize energy use and identify retrofits for existing commercial and institutional buildings and central plant facilities. [It] focuses on improving overall system control and operations for the building, as it is currently utilized, and on meeting existing facility needs. It goes beyond an operations and maintenance program. It does not ensure that the systems function as originally designed, but ensures that the building and systems operate optimally to meet the current requirements.

Is that clear? We think this other quote from the same federal guidebook makes it even clearer:

While most commissioning processes focus on bringing building operation to the original design intent, Continuous Commissioning is different. Continuous Commissioning focuses on optimizing HVAC system operation and control for the existing building conditions. This is an important distinction.

These excerpts make the point glaringly obvious, but we’ll make it still more so: Continuous Commissioning takes advantage of cutting-edge building monitoring and control technologies to glean mountains of real-time data from building systems and then adjust their operation accordingly, in an ongoing feedback loop. We think there’s a good analogy to be made to the advent of real-time magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology in the medical field. This technology has revolutionized modern medicine by offering a real-time look into — as opposed to a static snapshot of — the human body’s inner workings. Medical treatments are being modified and sharpened accordingly.

In a similar way, the real-time feedback and system modification capabilities that are offered by Building Automation Systems allow commissioning to be performed not as a one-time process that’s completed when a building is first constructed, nor as a static, snapshot-like modification that’s completed every few years as in retro-commissioning, but as an ongoing process in which systems are adjusted based on actual, present, day-to-day, minute-by-minute conditions.

DISCUSSING ACC

David Wolins, chief executive officer of energy consulting firm Scientific Conservation, does a really able job of explaining the matter in plain terms that makes it import readily apparent:

The biggest challenge facing [companies in the multi-billion dollar commercial building market is] something called “energy drift” — the constant, imperceptible loss of energy from commercial buildings that ends up costing billions of dollars and generating tons of toxic waste every year.

. . . . It might seem that so many structures are being built “green” these days that the issue of energy leakage has been solved. Wrong. The moment a building is commissioned for “optimal performance,” it is already fading from green to gray. Building designers and tenants immediately start tweaking thermostats and changing settings so that systems start sliding in efficiency yet again (”Making sure green buildings don’t fade to gray,” VentureBeat, May 4, 2009).

He also describes Automated Continuous Commissioning, or ACC, in excellent everyday-speak, and indicates its revolutionary significance:

Instead of configuring a building for optimal performance just once with occasional “tune-ups,” ACC performs 24-7 monitoring and analysis of a building’s energy consuming ecosystem. . . . By continuously collecting internal data about what’s going on inside a building, plus external data on things like the weather changes and utility pricing, limitations on operations’ forecasting are beginning to lift. And with ACC solutions making their way to market, energy efficiency is evolving from buzzword to benchmark.

This is definitely a topic to keep on your radar.

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Written by: Goodway Blogging Team

Tags: ACC, Automated Continuous Commissioning, Building Automation Systems, building commissioning, building energy management, Continuous Commissioning, energy efficiency, Federal Energy Management Program, FEMP, HVAC system, retro-commissioning, retrofits

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