Sensor Incipient Fault Impacts on Building Energy Performance: A Case Study on a Multi-Zone Commercial Building

Existing studies show sensor faults/error could double building energy consumption and carbon emissions compared with the baseline. Those studies assume that the sensor error is fixed or constant. However, sensor faults are incipient in real conditions and there were extremely limited studies investigating the incipient sensor fault impacts systematically. This study filled in this research gap by studying time-developing sensor fault impacts to rule-based controls on a 10-zone office building. The control sequences for variable air volume boxes (VAV) with an air handling unit (AHU) system were selected based on ASHRAE Guideline 36-2018: High-Performance Sequences of Operation for HVAC Systems. Large-scale simulations on cloud were conducted (3600 cases) through stochastic approach. Results show (1) The site energy differences could go −3.3% lower or 18.1% higher, compared with baseline. (2) The heating energy differences could go −66.5% lower or 314.4% higher, compared with baseline. (3) The cooling energy differences could go −11.5% lower or 65.0% higher, compared with baseline. (4) The fan energy differences could go 0.15% lower or 6.9% higher, compared with baseline.

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