Patent Application
20090259342
The invention pertains to environmental controls of occupant spaces, and particularly to controls of spaces that fail. More particularly, the invention pertains to remedying failed environmental controls of spaces.
The invention is a system that uses a surrogate approach for providing control of an occupant space that loses a benefit of its environmental conditioning equipment due to a loss of connectivity of its sensor or sensors with the controller of the equipment.
The invention is a system that uses a surrogate approach for providing control of an occupant space that loses a benefit of its environmental conditioning equipment due to a loss of connectivity of its sensor or sensors with the controller of the equipment. The loss of connectivity may be due to the sensors being wireless or wired sensors that have failed. The system may select a surrogate space from a number of spaces in the same complex which have similar environmental control parameters as the occupant space having the sensors that lost connectivity with their controller. The selection of a surrogate space may take into consideration various parameters of numerous spaces over time and be a result of analyses of them. The best surrogate space for a space which may incur sensor connectivity failure or discrepancy may change from time to time due to changing parameters and their historical aspects. The controller of the surrogate space may exchange information with the environmental conditioning equipment of the occupant space in order to maintain adequate control. Once the sensors of the occupant space regain connectivity, control of its environmental equipment may return to the controller for the occupant space. This would imply that wireless or wired sensors ensure comfort of an occupant's office in an as a reliable fashion as if the sensors were instead still available to the controller. The system for providing surrogate control may have application to other kinds of environmental conditioner failures or discrepancies of an occupant space.
Rules may be established for what the controller should do if it no longer has changing updates for the sensors in a space. The rules may include a global or building controller keeping a table of alternate behaviors based on sensor(s) in other spaces. If one VAV (variable air volume box), as an illustrative example, loses communication to the sensor, then it may take on a mimic behavior with the VAV controller in the next room. This mimic behavior may be initiated anywhere within the control architecture. When properly implemented, the loss of a sensor node should not result in dramatic changes in the environmental controls.
In constructing wireless based controls solutions, or wired systems with poor availability, a sensing element may be non-responsive for unpredictable periods of time. The customer may need the ability to maintain control of the environment in an acceptable fashion even under such circumstances. One may define several terms. A “controlled space” may be an area or zone that is controlled based on a pairing of a controller and at least one sensor. A “non-responsive controlled space” may be a space that has lost the benefit of its sensors, wireless or wired. A “surrogate space” may be a controlled space that has been identified as behaving under a particular set of circumstances in a very similar way to the controlled space that has lost wireless or wired communication between the sensor and its controller.
A surrogate-based controls approach may be implemented using a methodology to establish a “surrogate space” that behaves similarly to the space being controlled. For instance, when more warm air is added to the “surrogate space”, then the controlled space may also add warm air.
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The present system may provide an approach to establish surrogates for building control. In using wireless or wired temperature sensors, it frequently happens that a sensor is unavailable for a certain period of time. If that time is substantial, then the office or space will start to divert from the ideal controls approach. The system may establish other spaces which can be used as “surrogate spaces” in controlling that space. This alternate control approach may keep the comfort of a space under control. The present system may identify spaces that correlate well to the space where communications have been lost. After a period of time, or where there is a change in temperature in the room that is still in communication, environmental control of the room may start to automatically follow the other room relative to the control.
The present system may correlate a series of measured variables for virtually all of the controlled spaces in a building. The first of these may involve integrating the total airflow and energy that goes into a particular space. For example, the temperature of the air, the flow rate, and the actuator status may yield a total energy profile. Also included in an equation may be over-ride requests by the occupants and/or other over-ride factors. If a space or room is requesting cooler conditions in a similar pattern to that of conditions in another room, that may create a correlation. The present system may recognize that the surrogates can vary from one another due to different seasons, thermal loading, outside temperature, and so forth. Factors used in establishing surrogates for the present system may include cooling demand versus time, outside air temperature versus solar loading, heating demand versus time, the size of ductwork, and the control devices in a space. The size of a VAV box, as an example, may override requests for more cooling or heat if today is similar to yesterday. Then the same controlled space yesterday may be a surrogate for the non-responding controlled space today.
Trend logs may be used to record the environmental conditions of different spaces in a building. Records may be made of the room temperature, the airflow rate, the actuator opening, outside air temperature, time of day, temperature in the air duct, and so on. A correlation may include the total BTU going into a space or out of it. The space or room pair with the highest correlation may establish a surrogate pair. Virtually all of the spaces of a building may be correlated to other spaces. The best correlations for each space or room may be put on a list. The list may form the basis of the surrogates used for the alternate control approach. The list may continuously be updated and changes may be checked to assure that the best surrogate available is captured every day.
Collected information, surrogate correlation numbers, and so on, may be used in predicting service needs in the building. The system may involve building control software, wireless sensors, unitary controllers, building level controllers, among other things.
Surrogate control metrics may be used for predictive maintenance. As buildings get older, it is important to identify failing subsystems before they impact the control of and the occupant's comfort in the building. Where one has established a surrogate control approach, the data from continuously updating surrogate metrics may be used to predict maintenance needs in the controlled spaces. The present system does not necessarily use idealized system performance numbers but instead uses values derived from comparing each controller and controlled space to virtually every other controller and space in the building.
Surrogate metrics may be continuously updated to ensure that the best surrogate for control purposes is used when necessary. The present system may take data from the ongoing evaluation of metrics for the surrogate and apply them to the problem of preventative maintenance. When a group of spaces, which have a high correlation in view of surrogate metrics, has one space that starts to deviate from the correlation, it is indicative of a service need in the diverging space. If several spaces are diverging from a correlation, then a service opportunity exists in the air handler, boiler, or chiller that is handling the group of diverging spaces. The present system may include continuous review and analysis of data of the surrogate metrics in order to detect an unexpected divergence type of certain performance and then notify the appropriate operator/service company.
Often an approach may appear to focus on a change of behavior in a single controlled space rather than a correlation to the other spaces through the surrogate metrics. The present system may perform the latter approach by comparing a space that is changing relative to the other spaces. This approach enables the system to pinpoint and isolate problems to specific spaces, air handlers, duct work, and so forth. There may be an approach for establishing similar environmental control behaviors. The approach may include correlating performance of a first space and a second space. The correlating may involve one or more factors. These factors could include energy demand, thermal performance, solar loaded spaces, source of heating, source of cooling, outside air, time of day, date, occupancy pattern, override temperature requests, humidity, and so on. The correlating may lead to a figure of merit for establishing a best fit primary surrogate. The correlating may identify secondary surrogates in the event the primary surrogate is in a failure mode making sensor data unavailable.
An approach for watching surrogates may include continually monitoring a table of one or more surrogates to identify potential service issues, comparing surrogate behavior figures of merit for differing times of the year and solar loading characteristics for determining whether surrogate equipment for providing environmental control or conditioning, such as heating, cooling, outside air, and so forth, are behaving in line with their historic behavior.
Temperature control may involve a controlled space for the present illustration. So one's office may be a controlled space in that it has for instance one temperature sensor and one VAV controller to modulate the airflow into the space. There may be some selection criteria or metrics for the optimum surrogate, but for definition purposes, one might select a neighboring office as the best surrogate space. The office may have the same size, the same window placement, and/or other similar attributes. Each office may have a laptop computer but no refrigerator in the space. It may be noted that the respective occupants like cool offices. Both spaces may feed off the same air handler and rely on the same size ductwork and VAV box. The controlled space may have more than one surrogate space pairing if reasonable performance similarities exist. Their use may be prioritized based on the best surrogate space that is currently in wireless contact with its sensors. Metrics or criteria may include space temperature, airflow rate, actuator openings, outside air temperature, date and time of day, solar loading, heating/cooling demand, BTU in/out, temperature in air ducts, VAV size, area and volume of the space, and/or one or more like metrics or criteria.
The surrogate control approach may prevent the generation of a trouble ticket by the system for some predefined period of time. These kinds of availability gaps may be tracked to monitor the success of the surrogate control approach and any lingering problem with sensor availability in wireless or wired systems. One will not necessarily generate a problem ticket that needs a service technician until an availability problem has gone on for a considerable amount of time or the customer has noted a failure to control the environment adequately. Application of the surrogate control approach may mask the customer/occupant from noticing such problem for substantial periods of time. The problem could last for days undetected by the customer with a proper surrogate control approach. During this period, remote diagnostics may be applied to see if any other controller can receive messages from the sensor. Perhaps other non-noticeable ways to re-establish communication between the sensor and controller of the controlled space may be applied. In general, the approach of the present system may effectively meet the customer's critical need of not noticing differences between the environmental conditions when sensors are available or not.
An approach to establish the surrogate spaces may derive from time controls for a given building where installed. For example, a program was started and has been running in the background to compare how different spaces of the building behave. Spaces were identified in the simplest form that have similar cooling or heating needs on days with a given outside temperature. The program may find and quantify different spaces which behave similarly to build a table of surrogate or proxy spaces. So, if a sensor is no longer available in one space, then action in response may be taken based on the surrogate spaces.
An illustrative example would be in Phoenix during August; for instance, the change in cooling demand for space occupied by a customer over the course of a day may be huge. If a controlled space goes non-responsive and it is allowed to just act as if the temperature sensor was still available, then the customer may become very uncomfortable and have many complaints. On the other hand, if the surrogate controls approach is exercised, then the space will begin to cool down and the customer may stay comfortable no matter how hot it gets outside.
Correlation of data, mentioned herein, may indicate a best choice of which office to select as a surrogate. Although office 14 is adjacent to office 13, it may not be the best one to be selected as a surrogate for reasons as indicated by correlated data of the offices. Several factors that may result in poor data correlation between the offices may include office 13 having more windows than office 14 because of its being a corner office, and the occupant of office 14 preferring warmer conditions than the occupant of office 13. There may be additional factors of differentiation. In a large multi-story office building complex, a selection of a surrogate for an office may be chosen from among more offices than those shown in
A surrogate may be a construct of multiple spaces rather than just one space. It may be based on a virtual space that combines behaviors of other spaces to achieve a good match. A good match may a correlation of data and/or environmental information with that of one or more other spaces. This type of surrogate may be applicable to or a substitute for the other surrogates mentioned herein.
One or more of the sensors in the space may be temperature sensors and/or other kinds of sensors. The environmental conditioners may be or include VAVs, roof top units, heat pumps, fan coil controllers, chillers, loop heating or some other kind of HVAC related equipment. One might note that the sensor or sensors 63 of office 13 may lose connectivity with controller 43. The module 40 may notice conditions such as temperature to deteriorate or deviate from expected conditions in office 13. That may be when the module 40 goes to its running list of surrogates for the various spaces in the building. How the list may be developed and maintained is described herein. Module 40 may indicate that the best surrogate for office 13 is a space or office 14. Thus, environmental conditioner 54 control signals from controller 44 of space 14 may be selected and directed by module 40 to and through, or around, controller 43 to environmental equipment 53 for environmental control or conditioning of office 13. The surrogate control may continue until connectivity of the sensor or sensors 63 is reestablished with controller 43. The selection of the surrogate space is shown in the description of
The graph of
The graph of
Plot 23 is a correlation of data of office 13 relative to itself which should be a one. Plot 24 shows a correlation of office 14 data relative to office 13 data. Plots 22 and 25 are correlations of office 12 and 15 data relative to office 13 data, respectively. Plot 21 is a correlation of office 11 data relative to office 13 data. Plot 21 shows a situation that may be deteriorating in office 11 which appears to be a cause for concern and investigation. Office 14 appears to have the highest level of correlation (i.e., plot 24) according to other plots of correlation in the graph of
The temperature versus time of the day in office 13 is shown by a curve 33. The temperature in surrogate office 14 versus time of the day is shown by a curve 34. It may be noted that at 10 AM the offices 13 and 14 are at 72 degrees F. according to curves 33 and 34, respectively. Shortly after 10 AM, the temperature curves 33 and 34 begin to part from each other revealing a difference in temperatures which appears to be over one-half degree F. at about 11:20 AM, as shown at point 36. At this point of temperature difference, surrogate control may start. Control of the VAV box or other environmental conditioner for office 13 may be taken over by the controller for the VAV box or other conditioner for office 14. As may be seen in the graph, a differential of approximately one-half degree F remains between the temperature of offices 13 and 14 according to curves 33 and 34, respectively, through about the end of the office day, which is shown to be through 3 PM. If the sensor or sensors 63 of office 13 reconnect with controller 43, then the surrogate control may stop. One indication of surrogate control, besides a lack of sensor signals at the office 13 controller, may be the temperature curve 33 beginning to track closer to curve 34. However, the difference between curves 33 and 34 may instead be from a fraction of a degree to several degrees F.
However, if surrogate control does not kick in at point 36, the temperature of office 13 may increase significantly, especially on a hot day, as indicated by a curve 37, and result in a noticeably uncomfortable occupant. An opposite temperature trend may occur on a rather cold day without surrogate control.
In the present specification, some of the matter may be of a hypothetical or prophetic nature although stated in another manner or tense.
Although the invention has been described with respect to at least one illustrative example, many variations and modifications will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading the present specification. It is therefore the intention that the appended claims be interpreted as broadly as possible in view of the prior art to include all such variations and modifications.
