Proceedings of the 7th Asian Conference on Refrigeration and Air Conditioning

ACRA2014
May 18-21, 2014, Jeju, KOREA

ACRA2014-264
MULTIPLE PARAMETERS ANALYSIS FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY
OF BUILDING AIR-CONDITIONING SYSTEMS
Yew K. Chuah, Yoong P. Chng
Department of Energy and Refrigerating Air-conditioning Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology,
1, Sec. 3, Chung Hsiao E. Road, Taipei, 10608, Taiwan

ABSTRACT: Multiple parameters statistical analysis is proposed for the diagnosis of energy performance of airconditioning systems. Hourly data output of a building energy simulation is provided for the validation of this proposed
method. The annual hourly complex energy data are processed to create Bin parameters such as Bin temperatures and
Bin enthalpy difference. The results of the Bin parameters analysis show that air-conditioning systems can be diagnosed
for comparison or verification of real-time performance. The research also shows that outdoor dry bulb and wet bulb,
and also the indoor outdoor enthalpy difference Bin parameters, are the important parameters for diagnosing the
system performance factor (SPF) of the air-conditioning system. It has been found that for the same temperature and
enthalpy Bins, the SPF values obtained are close. In general the higher the enthalpy difference the higher SPF is
obtained. Frequency of the occurrence of the Bin parameters is also discussed. Hourly air-conditioning energy use is
also analyzed corresponding to different Bins of the parameters. The method of diagnosis as proposed can be used in
comparing system performance such as green building energy saving retrofitting.
Keywords: Air-conditioning, energy saving, statistical analysis, BEMS
1. INTRODUCTION
Much research literature can be found on energy
saving of building air-conditioning. Thermostats were
used to provide feedback temperature control [1]. Liu et
al [2] investigated energy management of public
buildings in China. Lam [3] worked on the optimal
control models for air-conditioning. Chen [4] considered
the building thermal mass in the dynamic operation of
building energy systems. iroky et al [5] used Model
Predictive Control (MPC) method to solve optimal
control over a finite number future window.
Clarke et al [6] mentioned that building simulation
can be used to test the efficacy of control strategies.
Crawley et al [7] introduced building energy simulation
programs. Of which DOE-2.2 [8] can be used to
performance hourly simulation of building energy. Ellis
and Mathews [9] mentioned that existing building energy
simulation tools are complex and time consuming
applying to general design problem. Simpler building
simulation modeling can be found such as degree day
method [10], for which efficiency or conditions of use
vary with outdoor temperature. The Bin method [10]
calculates the energy consumption by the number of
hours Nbin in a temperature interval (Bin) centered on
that temperature. Westphal & Lamberts [11] estimated
the annual cooling and heating using monthly average
values of temperature, relative humidity, pressure and
cloud cover.
With statements mentioned above the objectives of
this research are:
1. Verification of air-conditioning system energy
performance under equivalent operating conditions.
2. Diagnosing the parameters of energy performance

through comparisons to the Bin-processed and the

distribution of statistical analyzed data.
2. MULTIPLE PARAMETER ANALYSIS
The concept can be depicted as data stored in a
cube of dimensional space as shown in Figure 1. Each
cube contains the Bins values of the parameters of
concern. Analyses of the parameters are shown in Table
1 and Table 2. Air-conditioning system energy and the
system performance factor (SPF) can be computed from
the parameters stored in each of the cubes. SPF is
defined as in equation (1), where E is energy use and
cool load refers to the building cooling load. Note that
SPF is a measure of air-conditioning system performance
as it includes the power use by the whole system.
SPF= Ecooling

cool load

Eheat rejection

cool load

Epump
E
+ fan
cool load cool load

Figure 1 Dimensional space of Bin parameters

(1)

The parameters contained in the cube are the

hourly data. Therefore the frequency of occurrence of the
cubes can be used to estimate the air-conditioning energy
use. More so, real time performance of air-conditioning
system (HVAC) can be compared at the same conditions
with sufficient frequency of occurrence for verification.
In Table 1 and Table 2, WB and DB are the wet bulb and
the dry bulb temperatures of outdoor air. Energy is the
hourly energy consumption of air-conditioning system.
H is the enthalpy difference between indoor and outdoor
air. Occurrence is the number of data for the same set of
DB, WB and H Bins. is the standard deviation. The
Bins interval for the temperature is 1, and the Bin
interval for enthalpy is 1 kJ.kg.
Table 1 Sample raw Bin data.
Month Hour # WB DB Energy H
,
,
kWh
kJ/kg
6
2727 22
24
1000.4 7

coincident dry bulb and wet bulb for H=-3 kJ/kg are in
the low temperatures of below 19 and below 16,
respectively for dry and wet bulb temperatures.
Table 3 SPF for H= -3 DB=16 WB=15
Hour #
HVAC
Part load
SPF
Energy
ratio
1185
210.7
0.253
2.04
1186
202.0
0.210
2.08
1617
217.0
0.280
2.23
1618
206.8
0.231
2.25
2391
241.8
0.299
2.53

SPF
4.01

10

6785

22

24

677.6

3.68

12

5607

22

24

1079.5

3.65

11

6826

22

24

932.9

4.19

3305

22

24

720.5

3.64

Table 2 Statistical analysis for each Bin parameter

OA OA H
DB WB

Occur Mean
Mean
-rence energy Energy SPF SPF

22

24

822.2

175.7

3.837 0.253

It is seen above that low number of occurrence in

the same cube is of concern. Moreover there are only
2827 hours of air-conditioning operation in a year (8760
hours), with 2827 rows of data. Of which full occupation
is 2056 hours.
3. BINANALYSIS OF
HOURLY DATA FOR FULL OCCUPANCY
2056 of rows of data for full occupancy would
have higher recurrence of the parameters with the same
Bin values. Moreover equipment would operate at higher
capacity and therefore the energy efficiency analysis
would be more indicative. The data is processed into
discrete hourly data. Then the Bin-processed parameters
are DB, WB and H. H is indicative of the severity of
outdoor condition relative to the indoor ones. Moreover
higher cooling load would happe n w h e n the airconditioning system bringing in fresh outdoor air.
Air-conditioning system is operating even for
negative H due to internal load. Table 3 shows the data
for H=-3 kJ/kg, DB 16, and WB 15. It can be
observed that the five occurrences for these set of Bin
data are at low air-conditioning load. Although variable
air volume is applied, SPF is still low for the occurrences.
This could be due to lower equipment efficiency at lower
cooling load. However, this study considers the system
efficiency. Therefore the system as a whole is not
operating efficiently.
It can be seen in Figure 2 that the coincident
occurrence of dry and wet bulb temperatures . The

Figure 2 Dry and wet bulb Occurrence for H= -3 kJ/kg

Table 4 is presented for comparison. It can be
noted that SPF reaches a maximum above 3.0 for H= -1
kJ/kg. Maximum SPF corresponds to the upper values of
dry and wet bulb. It can be then seen that dry and wet
bulb temperatures are also key factors of SPF. It also
appears that mean SPF increases for higher H. H
around 3 corresponds to the season of spring and autumn,
when the outdoor dry bulb is near to the indoor
temperature setting.
It can be noted in Table 4 that there are relatively
larger number of occurrence for each value ofH. It was
mentioned above about statistical requirement of larger
number of set of data. It is then seen that full occupancy
of building has more set of data for energy analysis.
Therefore it is recommended that full occupancy be used
in air-conditioning energy diagnosis.
It is also observed rather scattered dry bulb (19
29) and wet bulb (1821) whenH is beyond 3
kJ/kg. SPF reaches 4 when H5 kJ/kg, at which the
outdoor dry bulb (DB) is now higher than desire indoor
temperature. It appears that air-conditioning system
function more efficiently as the summer is approaching.
The extremely warm conditions for H= 10 kJ/kg is
given in Table 4 for comparison. Outdoor DB then
reaches 36 corresponds to warmer days in summer.
Under this condition the air-conditioning system operates
almost in full capacity (PLR at 0.98 to 0.99).
The above discussion show that HVAC energy and
SPF increase with the increasing of the enthalpy
differences. But this might not be a confirm relationship
since dry bulb and wet bulb temperatures vary through
different enthalpy differences. As shown in Figure 2,
scattered distribution of dry and wet bulb Bins are seen

for H=-3.0 kJ/kg. However the above results do show

that enthalpy differenceH is a required parameters in
determining the performance of air-conditioning. The use
of SPF instead of chiller COP would enable the analysis
of equipment operation in partial load conditions, and
considering the energy consumption of all system
components. The above results do show SPF would
center around a number when data set with same DB,
WB andH are analyzed.
Table 4 Statistical analysis for with differentH
Items
H, kJ/kg
-1
1
3
5
10
Occurrences
133
96
97
53
261
Max energy
369.5 382.3 465.7 493.5 561.3
Lower DB
17
18
19
22
24
Upper DB
26
26
29
32
36
Lower WB
15
17
18
20
23
Upper WB
17
19
21
22
28
Max PLR
0.615 0.675 0.838 0.928 0.995
Mean PLR
0.348 0.457 0.583 0.743 0.983
Max SPF
3.44 3.670 3.92
4.09
4.37
Mean SPF
2.88
3.32
3.68
3.92
3.77
Figure 3 shows the mean SPF for H=0 kJ/kg at
various DB and WB conditions. A wide span of DB is
shown for WB at 17 and 18. At H=0 kJ/kg, there are
a number of data with the same Bins of dry and bulb
temperature. Therefore SPF given in Figure 3 is the
mean SPF. It is noted that higher SPF is found for higher
DB and WB. It is also seen that the frequency of
occurrence stays almost the same for DB spans from 17
to 26. SPF reaches 3 when DB and WB 23 and 17
respectively. In comparison with Table 3, airconditioning system performs more efficiently at these
conditions.

number of occurrence and the accuracy of the data, as

shown in Figures 4 and 5. It can be seen that with the
number of data five, the standard deviation is still
significant. However for number of data exceeding ten,
the standard deviation reduces sharply.
Base on the statistical analysis of 2827 rows of
data with occupancy equals to 1 in fraction, the
applicable data left is then 1793 rows. This condition
leads to effortless analysis of data for other occupancy,
which are 514 rows, 86 rows and 171 rows of data for
occupancy equals to 0.5 in fraction, 0.3 in fraction and 0
in fraction respectively. Hence these data is not analyzed
in this study.

Figure 4 Standard deviation of HVAC energy

Figure 5 Standard deviation of SPF

Figure 3

Mean SPF duringH= 0 in kJ/kg

4. STATISTICAL PROCESSING OF THE DATA

The statistical analysis required data base that
would give results of analysis of sufficient confidence.
However some data cannot be processed due to only 1
occurrence. There is a trend observed regarding the

5. VALIDATION OF THE ANALYZED DATA

To study whether the database with confidence
intervals of desired output parameters is useful for
HVAC system diagnosis, a validation is carried out to
test the database for its accuracy. Fresh air exchange is
increased from 0.1 air change per hour to 0.15, an
increase of 50%. More air change would bring better
indoor air quality.
The simulated data is process and analyzed to
compare with the original database which is already Binprocessed and created confidence intervals using tdistribution. The sample of new data is displayed as in
Table 5 and Table 6.
Notice that for HVAC energy almost all new
values falls between the confidence interval, except at
the hour 2580 where the HVAC energy is 222.2 kWh.
Hence out of 10 data for same required parameters, 1
data is out of the 90% confidence interval. This indicates
the confidence interval is exactly 90% correct for the
new data. As for the SPF values, only 5 out of 10 values
falls between the confidence interval. However it results
in only small percentage of error for mean SPF. The
mean values of both new SPF value and SPF value from

the database is quite near, which are 2.024 and 2.032

respectively. This might be due to the variation of
cooling load of the building. As discussed previously in
the analysis of the simulated results, SPF value may vary
due the deviation of cooling load. This phenomenon
again illustrates the high dependence of SPF values on
cooling load of buildings.
Table 5 Sample of newly simulated data
Hour #
226
227
228
230
231
232
233
2364
2580
226

WB

14
14
14
14
14
14
14
14
14
14

DB

18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18

HVAC
Energy
200.8
203.9
201.7
198.4
199.5
200.3
202.1
198.3
222.3
200.8

PLR

SPF

0.201
0.215
0.205
0.189
0.194
0.198
0.207
0.186
0.236
0.201

-3
-3
-3
-3
-3
-3
-3
-3
-3
-3

2.02
2.13
2.06
1.92
1.97
2.00
2.07
1.89
2.15
2.02

Table 6 Sample of completed database

Occur- Mean

HVAC Mean
rence HVAC HVAC Energy SPF
Energy energy 90%
Interval
9
202.4 7.58 197.75 2.032
207.15
.

SPF

SPF
90%
interval

0.0898 1.977
2.088

6. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The objective of providing a diagnosing method
evaluating the performance of HVAC systems is
achieved. The database after the statistical analysis of the
data from simulation can be used to diagnose HVAC
systems by comparing the measured results and stored
standard data. The HVAC system can enhance to the
expected efficiency and energy consumption through
comparing the particular data to the process data.
The annual hourly complex energy data are
processed to create Bin parameters such as Bin
temperatures and Bin enthalpy difference in this study.
The results of the Bin parameters analysis show that airconditioning systems can be diagnosed for comparison
or verification of real-time performance.
The research also shows that outdoor dry bulb and
wet bulb, and also the indoor outdoor enthalpy difference
Bin parameters can be used to diagnose the energy use
and the system performance factor of the airconditioning system. It has been found sufficient
statistical confidence can be obtained for predicting
HVAC energy and SPF. It was also found that in general
the higher the enthalpy difference the higher SPF is
obtained. Frequency of the occurrence of the Bin
parameters is also discussed. Hourly air-conditioning
energy use is also analyzed corresponding to different
Bins of the parameters. The method of diagnosis as
proposed can be used in comparing system performance

such as green building energy saving retrofitting.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The support of National Research Council by Research
Grant NSC-100-2221-E-27-100 - is gratefully
acknowledgement.