The HPAC Engineering article, “Cloud-Connected HVAC Systems Are at the Core of Smart Facilities,” sums it up: “You can’t have a smart facility without a connected HVAC system.”
Given that a commercial building’s HVAC system (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) accounts for 44 percent of its “energy consumption and is central to occupant comfort,” it’s safe to say that optimal operation of HVAC is critical. Everything needs to work, seemingly without delay, in order to ensure that a workplace in that building, for instance, will run smoothly.
Simple one-way optimization of an HVAC system is effective and can save upwards of 25% in operating costs. You may achieve more efficiency, better output and better usage of electricity and money. However, only two-way optimization of a building’s HVAC system can account for “real-time monitoring, analysis, maintenance, and fine-tuning.”
Essentially, one-way optimization helps, but you may never know in what ways it helped. You’re solving problems, but it’s impossible to learn from those problems if you don’t know what’s causing them. The performance feedback is key.
Without connection of your system’s data to an optimization provider through the cloud, your one-way optimized process will perform well for a year or two. But as equipment ages, performance erodes, and you won’t see that happening until you notice you’re not saving as much money as you used to. That original 25% savings in operating costs could gradually decrease to around 13%. “Without the external “brain” a cloud connection provides,” the article says, “the falloff can go unnoticed for quite a while” and end up costing the facility thousands of dollars.