A building automation system does more than keep your building comfortable and running smoothly. A building automation system—one that is set up and functioning optimally—saves money too; as much as 15 percent of the energy consumed by a facility.
BASs also save money by identifying operational issues. This feature allows the facilities manager, the Business Energy Advisor team writes, “to monitor and access the data to diagnose an operational problem rather than deploying a maintenance crew to search for it.”
And while some of those problems can be fixed by the FM staff, others will require a call to your control services provider.
How Old Is Your BAS?
Age is a multi-faceted problem in building controls systems. It’s not just that a part’s gone awry, but you’re told when you contact your control services provider that replacement pieces are no longer available.
And even if you could get the part, the older control system may not integrate into other building automation systems more recently installed. “Older controls generally have proprietary protocols,” Smart Buildings’ Jim Sinopoli tells Rita Tatum at FacilitiesNet.
Other Reasons for a Call to the Control Services Provider
Of course, it’s not just age that can cause a BAS to operate inefficiently or fail outright. Paul Ehrlich and Ira Goldschmidt at Automated Buildings say that “most often the problems are due to changes introduced in operation, often as a result of changes to building use, failed components, or system upgrades.”
Problems like improper use of reheat controls (when heat and cool fans run simultaneously) don’t require a repair, per se. However, it still may take a control services provider to conduct an audit of the site and BAS analysis to discover why energy consumption for the heating, cooling and ventilation systems is so high.
5 Common HVAC Issues
That said, common causes of HVAC inefficiencies are relatively easy to fix and may not require a control services provider, writes mechanical engineer Christos Samaras of My Engineering World. He outlined five issues to keep an eye out for:
- Building pressure—This can affect HVAC energy efficiency by as much as 40 percent.
- Poor equipment time management—It could be the BAS is not set correctly or equipment not connected to controls.
- HVAC documentation—This is needed for history, maintenance, and training.
- Lighting demand—HVAC operation is affected by the heat given off by lighting.
- Plug load—This also affects energy consumption.
Understanding Your BAS
One thing to look for when looking for an automation and control system for your facility is how it will be serviced when something goes wrong. While the building maintenance staff should be trained to repair some issues, the manufacturer’s local control services support staff should be capable and reliable.
“Most common problems we see include a lack of quality and timely service during testing and balancing, commissioning, and post-occupancy,” Saied Nazeri, of the professional services firm WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff, tells Consulting-Specifying Engineer. “High-performance design strategies are often not well-understood by controls technicians, who often try to employ standard and conventional controls solutions.”
HVAC expert Ron Auvil agrees. “The problem is often that HVAC control technicians may have a difficult time communicating with and working with building IT staff,” he writes at the Fluke Corporation’s blog. With increased training in networking basics and tools that diagnose common problems, the issue can at least properly communicated to the control services provider. This means a quicker fix and less downtime.
And it’s not just HVAC control techs who are working with as many as several generations of controls. At Electrical Construction & Maintenance, a group of experts examined this issue years ago, finding that “electrical service technicians today must understand the communications problems that crop up in multilayered building control systems.”
By broadening skills from purely electrical/mechanical solutions, they say, the FM staff and control service providers can “greatly improve their troubleshooting efforts.”
Open Protocols Still Break Down
These days, BASs are open, and allow numerous components to communicate with each other. Unfortunately, open protocols are not a “magic bullet,” says Facility Executive’s Frank Rotello.
“Especially as buildings get ‘smarter’—which is to say more complex,” Rotello continues, “weak links in the protocols can cause breakdowns in communications between the many parts of a facility (and major headaches for facility operators).”
These headaches involve the control services providers, too, as they make diagnosing issues more difficult. For example, some products have certain points exposed to open protocol, while other default to a private proprietary protocol, Rotello writes.
“This creates problems in a building, such as when attempting to integrate to an enterprise solution or trying to access setpoints or control parameters to run analytics or fault detection algorithms.”
Optimize and Evaluate Your BAS
If you’re new to building automation or you just want to optimize your system, there’s a great checklist to follow from smart buildings expert Phil Zito at Building Automation Monthly. While it won’t negate the need for control services, the 13-step list can help you get your system up and running after a failure.
Zito offers a five-part audio course on how to evaluate a building automation system, too. He covers 10 criteria necessary in a BAS, and he says that anyone who designs, installs or supports the system should find it useful.
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