The business and technical case for Continuous Commissioning® for enhanced building operations. A case study: Alamo Community College District San Antonio, Texas, U.S.A

Malcolm Verdict and Guanghua Wei, Energy Systems Laboratory

Keywords

Continuous Commissioning®, business case, building optimization, metering, energy savings verification, comfort

Abstract

This paper provides both the business and technical cases for the Continuous Commissioning (CC®) of large [>25 000 square feet], buildings through a whole building diagnostic and HVAC optimization approach known as Continuous Commissioning®. Continuous Commissioning is defined as the ongoing engineering process to resolve operating problems, improve comfort, optimize energy use and identify retrofits in existing buildings and central plant facilities. It is also known as "building retro-commissioning" or "building tune-up." It involves a rigorous, whole-building, engineering evaluation of the heating and cooling systems to identify mechanical problems, inadequate or ineffective control strategies. Some of the most common problems are:

Improper calibration of sensors and metering,
inadequate control strategies for optimum operation and comfort,
incorrect scheduling of heating and cooling equipment,
lack of air and water-side economizer equipment,
inadequate building automation systems, and
inadequate operations and maintenance.

The CC process, described in this paper, was successfully applied at Alamo Community College District (ACCD) in San Antonio, Texas, USA by the Energy Systems Laboratory (ESL), a part of the Texas A&M University System. ACCD has multiple buildings on 4 campuses with total conditioned area of 2.35 Million square feet. ACCD's business approach was unique because the cost of conducting the CC process was financed as an Energy Cost Reduction Measure (ECRM) along with several energy efficiency retrofits.