U.S. commercial building owners could save an average of 38 percent on their heating and cooling bills if they installed a handful of energy efficiency controls that make their heating, ventilation and air conditioning, also known as HVAC, systems more energy efficient, according to a recent report from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The estimated savings were based on computer modeling and simulation of building energy usage. The controls that could provide these savings are not widely available commercially, but the report’s authors hope their analysis will encourage manufacturers to expand their production.
“Investing in an American economy that is built to last includes taking advantage of all of America’s energy resources while working to improve efficiency,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “By making heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems in buildings more energy efficient, American businesses can save a significant amount of money by saving energy.”
Completed for the Department of Energy, the report examines options for improving the efficiency of commercial rooftop systems called packaged HVACs, which combine compressors, fans and heat exchangers into one unit. Packaged HVACs regulate temperatures inside more than 60 percent of the commercial building floor space in the United States, where commercial buildings consume as much energy as about 90 million typical American homes each year. And about 35 percent of that is used by HVAC systems, which are often poorly maintained or ignored, causing them to run inefficiently.
“The potential savings from adding advanced controls to existing packaged air conditioners with gas furnaces is enormous,” said PNNL engineer Srinivas Katipamula, who led the study. “The estimated savings depend on local climate and energy prices and range from a whopping 67 percent cost savings in San Francisco to a still-substantial 28 percent in Seattle.”
For the report, Katipamula and his PNNL colleagues considered implementing four different control methods to existing rooftop packaged HVACs: