Commissioning of HVAC systems in a campus building with regard to the indoor environment and energy performance

Today’s HVAC systems in the building sector become more and more complex in order to fulfill the increasing standard of the indoor environment, which typically have many components, sub-systems, and controls. Commissioning is a quality-oriented process to verify and document that the performance of buildings and HVAC systems fulfill the defined objectives and criteria. This study demonstrates the commissioning process in a campus building in Denmark. By analyzing the monitored date from BMS and on-site measurements, some fault operations and controls in the HVAC systems are identified, for example, improper setpoint for heating and ventilation, fault location of temperature and CO2 sensors, too high return temperature for district heating, etc. A building simulation model is developed and validated in order to test the optimization strategies and evaluate the energy conservation potential. An energy saving ranges from 20%-42% is realized after the implementation of the optimization strategies.