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DYLAN FRIDAY MECHANICAL OPTION
THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY
ARCHITECTURAL ENGINEERING SENIOR THESIS
PROPOSAL Click for full document
Mechanical Depth: Energy information system
The goal of next spring’s studies will be to determine how the building performance could be most effectively measured, and what data acqusition hardware would need to be installed to do so. This would include the identification and placement of various environmental and equipment sensors to measure and record information such as chilled water temperatures entering and leaving the various pieces of equipment or the number of people occupying each zone. In addition to the hardware, the data analysis software will also need to be studied for interpretation of the collected data. Hand calculations and excel spreadsheets will be the primary tools for determining how to most effectively assess mechanical system performance.
Justification of Mechanical Depth
The fundamental issue surrounding any energy model is the lack of ability to verify the results. Even when outputs are as expected, energy models cannot account for the inevitable errors in building operations and controls. The goal of the proposed project is to develop a network of data collection hardware and an analysis platform that would allow building operators to identify errors and correct them .
Electrical Breadth: Panel re-organization for submetering
As an electrical exercise, the installation of sub-meters placed at locations for gathering specific information will be investigated. This involves re-organizing the building’s distribution panels re-assigning loads to different circuits in order to isolate the desired loads for monitoring. Feeders, ciruit breakers, and associated electrical equipment will be resized as necessary.
Construction Breadth: Pre versus Post construction design and installation
A comparison will be made between the cost of installing the various sub-meters and sensors during the initial construction and the cost to install them as a renovation project, now that the building is already complete. The contractual implications of successfully implementing an energy information system will be investigated.
Masters Coursework:
The material covered in AE 558: Central Heating Production and Distribution Systems will serve as the bases for determining the best method for evaluating heating system performance. Similarly, AE 557: Chilled Water Cooling Loads will be the subject of the AAM’s chilled water plant analysis. Both of these classes will help in understanding what metrics are necessary to evaluate the efficiency of each system. This is material that would not have otherwise been discussed in any Architectural Engineering course; therefore these two masters classes are integral to the understanding of energy information systems.
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