Energy performance evaluation and development of control strategies for the air-conditioning system of a new building at construction stage

Energy consumption of HV AC systems in commercial buildings takes a great part of the total building energy consumption. Energy perIormance evaluation plays an important role in building energy efficiency improvement for existing buildings and new buildings. It is also the basis for the retrofitting measure evaluation for existing buildings and the control improvement evaluation of new buildings for building energy perIormance contracts. In this study, the energy perIormance evaluation of a super high-rising commercial office building in construction is presented. Alternative control strategies are proposed to improve the energy efficiency based on the current measurements of the original design as well as additional metering instroments as requested. These control strategies mainly involve optimal chiller sequencing control, cooling tower sequencing control, optimal water pressure differential set-point control, AHU supply air static pressure reset control and DCVbased fresh air control, etc. To assess the economic feasibility, the benchmark electricity consumption and the optimal electricity consumption using alternative controls strategies are estimated using dynamic simulations. The results show that the electricity savings using the alternative control strategies can cover the costs of an additional metering system and related software and hardware in about one year.