Smart Systems Commissioning for Energy Efficient Buildings

Session 2 Paper 2, CIBSE Technical Symposium, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool
11-12 April 2013

The gap between as-designed and as-operating energy consumption of new buildings has been widely recognized. Commissioning for optimal energy performance should be a key process to remedy this but in practice, due to shortages of time or budget, commissioning is often limited to ensuring ‘practical completion’ and minimum year-round energy consumption may not be achieved.

Commissioning implementation suffers, historically, from poor availability of real time data. Portable Wireless Sensor Networks (PWSN) offer substantial opportunities to support energy efficient seasonal commissioning by giving temporary access to additional, continuously and simultaneously monitored data points.

This paper describes a strategy to implement ‘smart commissioning’ through PWSN for air conditioning systems. Key requirements for delivering seasonal commissioning strategies of multi-modal systems are discussed.