Saving Money with Real-Time VAV Control Optimization

Outdoor airflow into a building is necessary for occupant health and comfort, but conditioning it requires large amounts of energy and makes overventilation an expensive problem. However, in variable air volume (VAV) systems a way exists to reduce this cost by increasing the efficiency of how the ventilation air is distributed. The secret is to oversupply discharge air to certain zones, despite the reheat penalty incurred by doing so. This counterintuitive notion reveals a trade-off in how energy can be consumed in different parts of the system. Advanced control systems can take advantage of this dynamic to optimize system setpoints in real time, yielding significant energy cost savings.