A Novel Approach to Save Energy by Detecting Faulty HVACs

• Published in: Journal of the Institution of Engineers (India). Series B, Electrical Engineering, Electronics and telecommunication engineering, Computer engineering Vol. 103; no. 2; pp. 305 - 311
• Main Author: Agarwal, Anshul
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New Delhi Springer India 01.04.2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Air conditioning; Communications Engineering; Energy conservation; Energy consumption; Engineering; Environmental effects; Networks; Optimization; Original Contribution; Power consumption; Smart buildings; Smart buildings; Fault detection; Heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC); Energy savings
• ISSN: 2250-2106; 2250-2114
• DOI: 10.1007/s40031-021-00666-7

Studies have shown that heating ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems are the major contributors to the high energy consumption of buildings. This has some serious deleterious effects on the environment. Thus, to reduce and optimize the energy consumption, it is important for the HVACs to work efficiently at all times. Existing techniques have focused on the optimal usage of HVACs for minimizing the energy consumption of buildings. This paper offers a pragmatic and holistic solution for saving energy in smart buildings by detecting faulty HVACs using power consumption and temperature data only. The developed approach is applied to a building consisting of forty-eight HVACs and is situated in Mumbai. A total of thirty-one HVACs were detected to be faulty. The results indicate that about 46% of energy can be saved if all the HVACs operating in the building are free of faults. This is an impressive saving in energy consumption, which demonstrates the effectiveness of this novel approach.