Life-cycle Costs For HVAC Systems and HVAC Equipment

Comfort and control, flexibility, equipment loads, energy efficiency and reliability: Today’s business environment is placing increased demands on building mechanical systems in a wide variety of ways. At the same time, improved HVAC equipment offer many opportunities to meet these demands cost-effectively.

Part of the issue of comfort is control: the increased demand by occupants to control the temperature and air flow in their immediate area. Where mechanical engineers used to group four or five perimeter offices together on one thermostat, now there are often only three offices, on average, per thermostat.

Occupants also are demanding improved air quality, whether that is achieved with increased air flow, improved filtration or a combination of the two. With today’s attention on “green building” construction in all its aspects — including energy efficiency, construction materials, outside air exchange and purity — air quality issues must be addressed in just about every project.

Other Systems
DDC systems provide more information about the operation of the HVAC equipment in occupant spaces (e.g., temperature and volume of air), centralized equipment control and improved documentation of HVAC operation. A DDC system either can be overlaid on, or replace, an existing control system — and it can control nearly all types of HVAC equipment. So it is a good option in either renovation or new construction.

In existing facilities, the distribution system’s energy efficiency can be improved by a retrofit using variable frequency drives on fans and pumps. Although these have been around for some time, they have gotten better, smaller and less expensive.

System Redundancy
Are there technologies over the horizon that will improve the operational efficiencies? Every time HVAC system technology seemed to have reached its pinnacle, this assumption has been proven wrong. The gains may come a little slower than in other fields, but they are probably still out there. There is new sound-wave based refrigeration under development, for example, which some day may be applicable to commercial HVAC equipment.

Given that the efficiency of HVAC technology generally improves in slow, steady increments, rather than great leaps of efficiency, it pays to consider upgrades about every 15 to 20 years. At that point, the gains are usually sufficient to justify a capital investment. But HVAC technology is only part of the story. An effective design strategy is also essential to getting the most out of opportunities for increased comfort and control, flexibility, capacity, energy efficiency and reliability.

Effective Design Strategies
The past few years have seen a greater recognition of the importance of advance planning in HVAC systems design. Part of the shift has come about because of new computerized tools that help maximize system design and operational efficiency.

HVAC today is characterized by new demands for comfort and control, flexibility, capacity, energy efficiency and reliability, and new opportunities to apply improved off-the-shelf technologies to meet building owners’ and managers’ needs. To ensure the best outcome, bring all members of the design and engineering team together from the outset. The measure of a building’s operational success is more than the mere sum of its parts.