Controls Improve Energy Performance

Why do buildings designed for high performance sometimes consume more energy than one would expect? Even with the most efficient HVAC equipment, the vulnerability of high performance buildings is in its controls. For existing buildings, improving controls can be the low–hanging fruit for an energy improvement project. Per the New Buildings Institute resource on controls, “inadequate controls can lead to 50% higher energy costs and 25% more to the operations and maintenance budget”.
Improperly set up or malfunctioning controls can lead to:

• • Reduced comfort levels

• • Increased equipment wear and tear

• • Increased energy consumption

With poor controls, HVAC equipment may overshoot cooling and heating requirements causing wide hot to cold and cold to hot temperature fluctuations. Also, the equipment may cycle excessively, turning on and off repeatedly. In cooling situations, this can lead to high humidity levels. Equipment cycling can also cause it to break down more quickly.

Additionally, improperly set up controls may cause your equipment to run heating and cooling modes at the same time and waste energy. Or, faulty controls can run equipment to unnecessarily maintain temperatures at times when the space or building is not occupied.

At Millies Engineering Group, we pay close attention to HVAC control details. We thoroughly review and sometimes tweak or improve the factory default settings to make sure our clients get the best comfort at the lowest energy consumption.

New Buildings Institute resources on HVAC, lighting, and plug load controls can be found at: https://newbuildings.org/resource/plug-load-best-practices-guide/ .