COVER STORY
maintenance may be considered a more simple service regime, we still need to ensure filters are clean or replaced on a regular basis. This is essential, especially in the health care sector.
As part of any service and maintenance agreement preventative maintenance is the key, however there are times where unforeseen breakdowns occur. This for many sectors can be detrimental due to the critical nature of the business operation. The game changer here is the development of a secure remote monitoring system, which enables greater levels of forward planning for maintenance and remote diagnostics of problems, further reducing downtime of the HVAC plant.
Remote Monitoring With today’s modern technology, remote monitoring is fast becoming a necessity in any modern building. With fast and fully secured networks and analytic software, the service engineer’s most powerful tool is becoming his tablet or laptop.
Secure remote monitoring has been in operation within the refrigeration industry for many years now and is now forming a part of the enhanced maintenance packages. This enables your HVAC plant to have predictive maintenance, closely monitor the energy usage and shorten reactive call out responses from hours to minutes, all from the comfort of your service office. It also enables the service provider to offer their expertise, advising the FM’s end users on how they can save energy from the HVAC operation.
With HVAC plants being one of the highest users of energy in any building today, any changes to their operational status needs to be evaluated carefully using the correct information. Remote monitoring of your HVAC plant is a key step in finding ways to reduce energy consumption, thus reducing the buildings energy costs.
Data collated from remote monitoring takes into consideration the key elements needed to evaluate the energy usage, including, input power, delta T, chilled water temperature, chilled water flow rates and ambient conditions. With this information the FM/end user can reduce the energy usage of the plant that requires little or no investment.
New buildings are designed to X occupancy, once the occupancy is filled and the building becomes live, there is always the desire to increase occupancy above the design of the building. This creates a new dynamic for the HVAC plant where the operational aspects have changed to what it has be designed to do, which in turn requires operational data to see how the plant can be improved or enhanced.
Remote monitoring does this! The system enables the FM/ end user to assess and flex their HVAC plant to suit the building demand. For example, can the current HVAC plant sustain longer operational hours? Does the building require more chillers? Can the additional plant operate at part load rather than one at full load? The collective data that the remote monitoring system now captures, enables all these
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factors to be analysed quickly and efficiently to allow smart and cost effective decisions to be made.
With Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) technology now common in high efficiency modern manufactured chillers, the part load performances are so effective, energy saving can be made with more plant operating at part load than full, collating operational data enables this to be evaluated especially when the building dynamics have changed.
Improving business standards that are energy focussed creates the need and drive to ensure the HVAC plant is maintained and monitored to operate in its most efficient way possible. This will reduce energy consumption which is great for the environment and in turn will reduce operational costs, which is great for business and the ‘bottom line’.
Over the last 30 years, since coming into the industry, I have seen major shifts in the way in which service and maintenance is delivered to end users and the demands of service engineers is ever increasing. The change in delivery going forward is still with service engineers but also providing additional tools such as remote monitoring to deliver a higher level of service above which has previously been provided. It is exciting to see where the service market is going and what future enhancements may be ahead.
www.daikinapplied.uk TOMORROW’S FM | 17
With the drive for businesses to hold ISO 50001 status, enhanced maintenance packages & remote monitoring packages will assist in making this process simple and easier to implement.
The ISO 50001:2011 provides a framework of requirements for organisations to:
• Develop a policy for more efficient use of energy • Fix targets and objectives to meet the policy
• Use data to better understand and make decisions about energy use
• Measure the results • Review how well the policy works • Continually improve energy management
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