The new Building Agent (BA) system allows facility managers to quickly diagnose and adjust for problems based on building occupant feedback provided via an application dashboard on desktop computers. This could help buildings to become more energy efficient given that 25 percent of a building’s energy performance is related to occupant behaviour.
The BA tool operates through four key layers: hardware, databases, visualizations and applications. Intuitive visualisations concerned with energy use and comfort help to establish building performance and help managers and other occupants understand building performance. Presentation of data in context to what the building should be doing enables facility managers to locate problems and make knowledge-based decisions quickly. The application also provides aggregated data on electric energy, thermal energy, internal temperatures, humidity and lighting levels.
The savings potential of BA will be seen in the reduction of annual energy use and peak demand. The application provides feedback on actual versus expected energy use for each building system and can prompt occupants to take direct action such as setting computers to hibernation mode when not in use.
As a research tool, BA provides a better understanding of the occupant acceptance of energy efficiency measures and how typical design practices need to be improved to produce low-energy buildings.
“This goes beyond the kinds of energy dashboards that facility managers might be familiar with” said NREL Senior Engineer Larry Brackney. “By integrating comfort feedback with traditional measurements, BA ties the notions of comfort and energy performance together in a way that no other application has done. Building occupants become an active part of the comfort and energy trade-off along with the facility managers.”
The application is already in use in several buildings on the NREL campus and a version of BA is deployed at the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, California where it is used to conduct an electrochromic window comfort assessment. This enables electrochromic windows to tint automatically to reduce solar heat gain, which can eliminate the need for window shades and potentially reduce cooling load.
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