A continuous commissioning tool based on simulation and operation records

This paper describes a newly developed prototype of continuous commissioning tool that can be stand-alone or be embedded in a BEMS to continuously monitor a building’s HVAC systems performance and detect faults during operation phase. The component models are either taken from HVACSIM+, SIMBAD, etc. or newly developed. The tool judge whether there are faults in the systems through comparing the operational data with the performances of the systems without faults obtained from operation records or simulation. In order to test whether the tool can detect faults correctly or not, experiments were conducted in a real central HVAC system in Yamatake Building System Company (YBS). Four types of faults that are amenable to automated continuous commissioning were introduced into a VAV air handling system in YBS. The experiment results show that the tool can easily detect these faults.