An educational institution in the province of Ontario Canada approached CopperTree Analytics to perform fault detection and diagnostics analysis in their facilities. The client wanted to decarbonize their building portfolio as well as minimize their carbon footprint in all 8 of their buildings.
This higher education client wanted to use CopperTree analytics to make their buildings more sustainable. The project aimed to improve HVAC performance and energy use by applying fault detection to a 100,000 sqft. building with high consumption as a test case. Kaizen, our FDD platform, would help optimize the building operation by finding and reporting anomalies in the HVAC and building automation system. The CopperTree Technical Services team met with the client regularly as part of our Managed Services offering to discuss the high priority insights from Kaizen and help them with appling the recommended fixes.
The client received a CopperConnector from CopperTree to connect their BAS to the cloud and get real-time data. The CopperConnector finds data points on the BAS network and uploads them to the cloud, where they are analyzed by powerful algorithms and displayed for building owners. Within a week, Kaizen detected various insights using CopperTree’s standard rules. One of them was a high-priority insight about a boiler that was cycling excessively. The boiler had about 33 cycles per day, which was too much and could damage the equipment and its lifespan. It could also affect the ventilation response of the HVAC systems in the building. Moreover, it could lower the boiler efficiency, increase energy use and carbon emissions.
CopperTree Analytics’ Building Application Engineers recommended optimizing the hydraulic circuit to improve the situation. This could involve adjusting the emitter size or balancing the radiator valves to ensure even heat distribution and lower return temperatures. They also suggested avoiding oversizing the heating system, setting up bypasses and using efficient control strategies to reduce the environmental impact and operational cost without affecting the heating system’s efficiency.
By fixing the boiler cycling issue with Kaizen, the client could save about $31,000 per year. This would also prevent about 220,000 kg of CO2 emissions, which is similar to burning about 24,721 gallons of gasoline in a year in the US.
