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HVAC products are provided with energy specifications that outline their energy use and performance during operation. The energy data is essential to making calculations of the energy usage of the systems and buildings they are to be installed within. When two or more products are interconnected and controlled to optimise their performance or efficiency, the calculations required at system level are no longer simple.
In this blog post, Mike Ward, BIM & Digital Construction Manager, shares his view on this issue from a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) perspective and explains what is being developed in this area.
This may be over-simplifying HVAC consultants’ and designers’ work, but it is often relatively straightforward to select single products that are individually energy efficient, combine them and make the whole work as expected. For example, to select air handling units with low specific fan power (SFP) values, heating/cooling units featuring high coefficients of performance (COP)/energy efficiency ratios (EER) etc, and integrate them to create a solution that provides the building with the required indoor climate.
Now, what is less commonly recognised, is that the systems which link these energy efficient units together, and ensure a seamlessly operating whole, can contribute to further energy savings, if they are carefully selected and correctly used. This possibility was discussed in our previous blog post, The significant energy savings that hide in the gaps.
So, what is “carefully selected and used correctly”??
At a basic level, this involves ensuring the components of the systems can communicate their changing needs to allow the performance of the system to be optimised. It is therefore ideal to choose systems that can cooperate with the selected units, and to control them in a flexible way that meets their demands while optimising energy efficiency.
When a system can control the heating, cooling and ventilation products it connects, it can ensure that each product works within its optimal operating range by adjusting setpoints and demand levels continuously. This ensures high efficiency while still meeting the demands on the indoor climate.
SmartLink+ and WISE Water
Our optimisation functions, SmartLink+ and WISE Water are developed to do exactly this. They package advanced variable temperature control for complex systems into standard products. They ensure that each heating and cooling product operate at their absolute optimum and that the indoor environment is provided heating and/or cooling that meet the actual demand.
While consultants and designers very well understand the principles behind these energy savings, it is difficult to quantify them for each project without being stuck with time consuming and detailed calculations. Therefore, the real life energy savings generated by these optimisation systems often are not included in the building energy calculations. In a world of rapidly tightening building energy regulations, these additional energy savings could make the difference in meeting regulations, standards and achieving energy certifications such as BREEAM.
Swegon ESBO
Swegon’s energy design software, ESBO, helps consultants and designers working in early project stages right through to the final HVAC solution. Within minutes, ESBO calculates the capacity requirements and annual energy use of rooms and buildings.
At the moment, our Swegon team is working with the ESBO team on a new release of the software which will incorporate our system optimisation functions, SmartLink+ and WISE Water.
Also the energy design software IDA.ICE by EQUA, which is the ‘big brother’ of ESBO, will have these functions available.
The core advantage of this advancement is that, for the first time, consultants will be able to model and quantify the energy savings that these optimisation functions provide. The systems will be available in a simple menu and can easily be activated or deactivated to make energy savings comparisons.
This allows consultants and designers to quantify energy savings without time consuming and complex calculations, and to mirror these in their project documentation. A further benefit is that property owners will gain clarity and confidence in the energy savings potential and can get an idea of the buildings’ compliance with regulations, standards and energy certifications early in the design phase.
Learn more about WISE Water and get familiar with the ESBO software on our website.
