Further Details
Demand Response/Curtailment Services
When Holden arrived at this large university in 2015 the combined PJM PLC (peak load contribution) of two main services was about 11,000 kW. After extensive changes engineered by Holden in conjunction with operations personnel and management, when he parted ways with that same facility in 2020 the same PLC was about 3,300 kW.
That savings of approximately 7,700 kW is worth over $600,000 in avoided capacity costs in the 2020-21 PJM program year and was achieved with no new investment, simply leveraging in-depth knowledge of the PJM programs, asking the right questions, and taking decisive action using existing plant and personnel.
In addition, other programs were improved during Holden’s tenure and resulted in additional benefits, particularly related to PJM’s transition to a year-round program.
Chiller Plant Optimizations
Poor delta T and operational issues plagued some of this university’s largest chiller plants – the victims of poor engineering over the years. At one of the worst performers, after installing proper metering and automated plant benchmarking Holden worked in conjunction with qualified, vetted contractors and engineers, and the plant operators to devise a remediation and improvement plan to be implemented with little to no downtime even though the plant operates 24 hours/day, 365 days/year.
These improvements were made to be flexible, so that changes could be reversed if needed, but have eliminated the use of primary pumping completely and transitioned to a variable secondary model. The plant is now configured to accept a plate heat exchanger for low-cost winter cooling as the budget allows and more changes are anticipated within the buildings to fully capitalize on the improvements.
Performance has improved from an average of about 3.0 kW/ton to under 0.8 kW/ton, a significant 73% improvement in efficiency – with better operating characteristics.
Air Handler Retrocommissioning and Upgrades
Holden has retrocommissioned and otherwise improved countless air handler systems over many years and in all kinds of facilities.
After first determining that each air handler is only operating for the required hours (turning units off when they are not needed always has the best payback and is usually our first optimization) from there the main sources of issues in air handlers are the type and operation of outside air dampers and the issue of simultaneous heating and cooling – fighting between heating coils and cooling coils.
We need to be very careful when considering outside air that the building continues to be properly ventilated. It is easy to save energy at the expense of creating a sick building (an issue which has finally come to be taken seriously). So we work to ensure that positive indicators of airflow either exist or are installed as part of a project.
Simultaneous heating and cooling can be difficult to solve – the reasons for its occurrence are varied and too-often ignored. Holden knows that there are often valid underlying reasons why operators adjust setpoints to create simultaneous heating and cooling conditions – we have seen issues with needing to keep a load on a chiller so that other more critical areas continue to receive chilled water. Other times keeping adequate steam flow in a preheat coil so that condensate moves and does not freeze. Or increasing preheat temperatures to maintain chilled water flow so that the chilled water coil does not freeze. Amazingly, occasionally all three issues might exist in a single air handling unit.
Quite often we observe that temperatures through the unit do not make sense – perhaps the mixed air temperature sensor is reading higher than either outside air temperature or return air temperature. Or other controls issues exist that need to be scrutinized with test equipment, and a plan developed to fix the underlying problems.
In some cases, we note that vital sensors were never installed! Mixed air temperature might be missing, for example.
Solar and Renewable Consulting
Holden has been a champion of renewable energy for decades – having a physics background we have enjoyed the scientific miracle of holding a special piece of semiconductor material up to light and watching it power electrical equipment.
We have watched the spectacular price declines seen in solar and wind renewable energy over the past few years which makes these technologies viable, at least at utility scale.
Holden was part of teams exploring various federal facilities to determine suitability for renewable energy, using specific tools such as RETscreen to run standardized models to compare technologies and find the right applications.
In addition, Holden has helped a large university quantify the cost of getting to net zero carbon emissions with a straightforward and uncomplicated analysis of different options and from there he helped develop a renewable power purchase agreement.
In addition, Holden has analyzed wind projects and solar projects in a variety of settings – always considering physical constraints (zoning, setbacks, roof loading and future maintenance) and electrical questions (feeding output into the electrical grid or into a host building).
Automated Intelligent Retrocommissioning (AIR-Cx)
With the proliferation of direct digital control (DDC) systems and sensors almost everywhere the time is right to leverage all this information, mining the data to determine operating metrics that can be automatically flagged when the system calculates we are operating outside of parameters.
Of course, the reality can be challenging with bandwidth constraints and system interoperability being some of the major difficulties. These are the times when you would probably like to engage someone who understands the issues and how to work around them with solutions that demonstrate a complete comprehension of your building automation system ecosystem.
For these types of projects, which tend to combine hardware and software aspects, as well as the results interpretation and eventual remediation, we partner with experts in the field like Intellimation. This company is on the leading edge of innovation in this space.
Commodity Purchasing
Everyone (everyone!) tells you they can get you the best price. Logically someone can – someone must have the best price, but commodity markets are so dynamic that nobody ever knows for sure.
So the best concept is to follow a process to select vendors who can meet your standards, then bid out the commodities and ladder the buys for different time periods.
And if you retain a “consultant” who gets paid by the supplier who are they actually working for…?
Furthermore, fixed price commodity contracts might seem like a good fit BUT with the correct independent advisor (again, not getting paid by the commodity supplier) you can probably save money by unbundling some of the supplier charges and controlling that risk for yourself.
City Benchmarking
A proliferation of new laws from some of the larger cities are requiring that large commercial buildings and residential complexes submit their energy use and cost data to the city for benchmarking. Generally, it is not a particularly complicated process, but the tools these cities require you to use are extremely strict about how they receive the data. And even if you know how to do it the process can be time-consuming, particularly if you do any sort of error checking. At the end of the day does it really fit your core mission?
Perhaps we are biased (only slightly), but if this is not part of your core mission perhaps this is one annual task that you can easily outsource and call it done!
Building Tune-Ups
New building performance target and "tune-up” laws are appearing on the books in many cities.
Much of the same questions could be asked of building owners who are subject to this: namely, do you have the personnel to accomplish this task, and is it part of your organization’s core mission?
At least one of these laws requires outside auditors (without seeking special permission from the city) and perhaps there is value in having a trained energy professional do this work, the outside perspective may be of value. Much of the same questions could be asked of building owners who are subject to this: namely, do you have the personnel to accomplish this task, and is it part of your organization’s core mission?
There are specific requirements for the testing and reporting which Holden can help you with.
Energy Accounting
Related to recordkeeping, Holden understands the importance and mechanics of proper energy accounting. For the past 20 years EnergyCAP (was called FASER) has been Holden’s go-to software for energy accounting and indeed Holden has written multiple modules in Visual Basic for Applications which can query an EnergyCAP database directly from Excel and retrieve or tabulate results.
If and when your organization decides that a general purpose accounting system is not capable of providing the energy-specific tracking and reporting that you require Holden is more than happy to assist with a needs-based assessment and any subsequent implementation including database design, training, and enhancement to integrate EnergyCAP with your other systems.
Energy Product Submetering
“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.” – H. James Harrington
We concur. Completely. The issue we always run into though is quantifying the benefits of metering especially before the installation.
Intuitively we know that the quote is correct, however assigning potential savings numbers to a metering project can be very challenging and this is particularly true because the savings may depend on how the metering data is used.
At some institutions there is very little correlation between the metered energy use in a building and what the occupants pay, in fact this is very common in large facilities where there might be a fixed fee for utilities and other facilities services.
In that case it would be wise to make the metered data correlate directly to the charges that individual groups or departments eventually pay although that definitely falls into the “easier said than done” category!
LEED Consulting
Holden was an early adopter of LEED-based standards in the early part of the 21st century (even while dealing with Y2K issues in various systems!) and has led the management of several LEED-EB (Existing Buildings) certifications at significant facilities. In addition, Holden has participated in the LEED certification of several other buildings.
The LEED rating system serves a useful purpose in forcing difficult decisions and generally improve buildings – my experience tells me that having someone with experience in the system can pay significant dividends in terms of time and money saved in the long run.
Holden’s specialty is LEED O+M (Operating and maintenance for existing buildings) but he has been involved in a number of LEED BD+C (LEED for Building Design and Construction, for new construction or major renovations). LEED is again coming into its own as a valuable rating because several cities allow concessions in their benchmarking and tune-up laws for buildings which have already met LEED standards.
Computer Systems Programming
Operational Technology (OT) is the backbone of most facilities today. With multiple systems in operation the ability to pass information between the systems is extremely important but that is not all…most times that data must also pass inbound or outbound to external reporting tools, data acquisition hardware, data historians and the like.
It is rare that these cross-system data exchanges can be made to occur without significant programming either in the host systems (such as a building automation system [BAS]) or in the peer system, or via some external programming running as a background task somewhere.
And given that different BAS systems takes markedly different approaches to programming (drum programming versus block programming, for example) facilities groups often find themselves
The sheer number of different data transfer protocols and ports used is massive and most IT groups view “their” IT infrastructure as they would have a telephone line where they don’t care what language you speak over the phone. So once they provide a suitable communications path, your ability to communicate with the other party is simply not their issue.
For over 30 years Holden has been writing software to solve facilities and business process issues. He obtained his Master's of Science in Information Technology because he could see the value of data in energy management and his involvement in these types of projects has only accelerated over the past decade.
Let us know how we might help you! There is no fee or obligation for an initial discussion via email, or by phone 1-610-212-3466. Thank you.
