After several years of cooperation between the University Centre for Energy Efficient Buildings of CTU and the company Energocentrum Plus, s.r.o., a system of automatic error detection and diagnostics for heating systems and air handling units has been successfully implemented. Based on operational data, it helps to identify inappropriate technology operation and warns the operator what to focus on during optimization.
With the current trend of increasing energy prices, it makes sense to look for different ways to save energy. Building modifications are often very expensive, and any improvement in the operation of TZB equipment can fundamentally reduce building operating expenses. In addition to reducing energy consumption, our diagnostics also help to increase the lifespan of individual components and maintain a pleasant indoor environment.
In the field of air handling units, we focus on improving the operation of individual components, such as fans, dampers, heat recovery, heaters, coolers, etc. In heating systems, the created rules help to detect problems with poor regulation of equipment, for example with boilers, pumps and valves, and then identify clogged heat exchangers, or overheating and underheating of heating circuits. At the same time, deficiencies, such as underheating or overheating, do not have a simple cause and can be caused by a number of sub-problems. In such a case, it is therefore necessary to determine not only the fault conditions that have arisen, but also their possible origin.
Currently, the SCADA BI project is underway, which focuses on further development of ontologies and semantic description of data using the Brick standard, which is intended to significantly improve diagnostic capabilities through better capture of energy flows in TZB systems. Another subject of development is also automatically generated analytical visualizations, which are intended to offer building maintenance a simple and comprehensible overview of the behavior of systems, or of which devices need attention in order to improve operations.