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Evaluation of Emerging Diagnostic Tools for Commercial HVAC Systems
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.
Citation
Friedman, H.; Piette, M. A. (2001). Evaluation of Emerging Diagnostic Tools for Commercial HVAC Systems. Energy Systems Laboratory (http://esl.tamu.edu); Texas A&M University (http://www.tamu.edu). Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /5164.