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The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) is unique in translating fundamental scientific discoveries into scalable technology adoption. Our approach combines an understanding of the marketplace and the role of state and federal regulation and policies. ETA's research drives real-world, practical results that affect and improve the everyday lives of Americans and those across the globe. Saving energy and battling the Climate Crisis are key to the foundation of our research, which is driven by technoeconomic analysis and in-lab experimentation and discovery.

Evaluation of Emerging Diagnostic Tools for Commercial HVAC Systems

Publication Type

Conference Paper

Date Published

05/2001

Authors

Friedman, Hannah, Mary Ann Piette

Abstract

This paper compares and evaluates the capabilities of six emerging diagnostic tools for commercial HVAC systems. We present a brief description of the diagnostic tools, and then focus on evaluating the features of the tools. We include the following six tools in our analysis: Architectural Energy Corporation's ENFORMA® software, Facility Dynamics Engineering's Performance And Continuous Re-commissioning Analysis Tool (PACRAT), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Whole Building Diagnostician (WBD), Pacific Gas and Electric's Universal Translator, UC Berkeley's Fan System Tools, and Silicon Energy's Enterprise Energy Management Suite. The air-side economizer operation is the most common diagnostic across the tools, so this diagnostic function is evaluated in detail. We outline the key strengths and weaknesses of each tool, while keeping in mind the tool intent and current extent of commercialization. Each tool has unique features for data management and analysis, which can be beneficial for different applications and users.

Journal

International Conference for Enhanced Building Operations (ICEBO)

Year of Publication

2001