Early evaluation of a second generation information monitoring and diagnostic system
Private sector commercial office buildings are challenging environments for energy efficiency projects. This challenge is related to the complexity of business environments that involve ownership, operation, and tenant relationships. Whether it is poor quality design, inefficient operations, degradation of equipment over time, or merely the increasing use of energy by tenants and inattention from landlords, commercial office building energy use continues to increase. This research project was developed to examine the environment for building operations and identify causes of inefficient use of energy related to technical and organizational issues. This report discusses a second-generation Information Monitoring and Diagnostic System (IMDS) installed at a leased office building in Sacramento, California. The report begins with a brief summary of the IMDS research at the previous building, followed by a discussion of the building selection process, the IMDS design and installation, recent use of the IMDS, costs and benefits, and fault detection and diagnostic research using the IMDS. A web site describes the IMDS in detail (see imds.lbl.gov). The underlying principle of this research project is that high quality building performance data can help show where energy is being used and how buildings systems actually perform is an important first step toward improving building energy efficiency. The project utilizes a high-quality monitoring system that has been developed during the past decade by a partnership between LBNL and private industry. This research project has been successful in demonstrating that the IMDS is tremendously valuable to the building operators at the Sacramento site. The building operators not only accept the technology, but it has become the core of their day-to-day building control concepts. The innovative property management company, Jones Lang LaSalle, is interested in installing more sites to determine if the system could provide an economic platform for regional operations. One objective of this project was to install the IMDS and evaluate the costs and benefits of its use. The costs have been evaluated. The system cost about $0.70 per square foot, which includes the design, hardware, software, and installation, which is about 30% lower than the previous system in San Francisco. A number of operational problems have been identified with the IMDS as described in the report. Potential energy savings from addressing problems identified by the application of the IMDS have not yet been quantified, although the IMDS has been an important tool to the operations staff to help better assess planned future retrofits.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE. Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Office of the Building Technologies Program. State and Community Programs; Sacramento Municipal Utility District, California Institute for Energy Efficiency, California Energy Commission. Public Interest Research Program (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC03-76SF00098
- OSTI ID:
- 840325
- Report Number(s):
- LBNL-53526; R&D Project: 80EE01; TRN: US200510%%72
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 25 Mar 2002
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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