Continuous Commissioning® of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport

Abstract

The DFW International Airport is one of the largest and busiest airports in the world. Located in North Texas, squarely between the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, the DFW Airport not only serves a huge population in the North Texas area for domestic flights but also is a major airport for international flights. The Energy and Transportation Management (ETM) Department, at the Airport, is responsible for reducing energy within their facilities, and they are very aggressive in energy management. In recent years they have renovated or replaced much of the equipment in their central utilities plant and added a huge 90,000 ton-hr (316.5 MWh) chilled water thermal storage system. The electric bills, for the accounts managed by ETM, was $29 million (€20 million) in 2007. Although the ETM staff had initiated many energy efficiency measures, they felt that the energy consuming systems could be optimized to realize additional energy and cost savings. The Energy Systems Laboratory was hired to apply the Continuous Commissioning® (CC®) process at the airport. Five projects have been identified to date including: 1. An energy audit and assessment of Terminal B and a lighting demonstration pilot project. 2. CC of the Consolidated Rent-A-Car Center. 3. CC of the Airport Administration Building. 4. CC of the new International Terminal D (on-going). 5. CC of the Utilities Plant, Energy Plaza (on-going). This paper will focus on the completed projects: the Consolidated Rent-A-Car Center, the Airport Administration Building, and the major on-going projects, CC of Terminal D and Energy Plaza.