Fault Detection And Diagnostics (FDD) Is Attracting Industry Interest
August 20, 2013
Today's tip from
Building Operating Management comes from Jim Sinopoli of Smart Buildings LLC. Fault detection and diagnostics is attracting industry interest.
If you are buying books or music from an online site, it's likely that the e-commerce company analyzes your purchases, creates a profile of what type of books or music, authors or performers you like, and then proactively sends you email regarding other items you may be interested in purchasing. Those firms regularly mine data to improve their business performance. Generally facility managers haven't fully embraced such data analytics. However, that is changing.
Today, a new generation of analytics is becoming available to facility managers. The most prominent of these new analytics tools is fault detection and diagnostics. Fault detection and diagnostics finds problems within building systems that are causing the HVAC system to waste energy.
The idea of fault detection and diagnostics for HVAC systems is not new. Research, development and testing of fault detection approaches have been around for about 20 years or so. What is new is the increased interest in and actual use of fault detection. For example, Microsoft has seen promising results with fault detection and diagnostics. Another example of industry approval of data analytics and fault detection and diagnostics came in October 2011, when the U.S. Green Building Council announced a technology agreement that would allow building owners to use an automated fault detection tool with the LEED Online platform, thus supporting the commissioning of buildings. USGBC's interest is that the tool generates reports for LEED Online, including diagnostic functions and faults during the building's performance period.
Another sign of industry interest comes from a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study on monitoring-based commissioning, which uses building diagnostics. Lawrence Berkeley established an average energy savings of 10 percent through the use of monitoring-based commissioning, with as much as 25 percent in some cases.
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