Diagnostics (Legacy)
The Diagnostics module identifies and diagnoses energy waste, uncomfortable conditions, and maintenance issues and prioritizes issues according to their dollar value or comfort impact. Diagnostics performed on building data quantify cost, energy and comfort impacts on an equipment-by-equipment basis. The Diagnostics module automatically creates a list of the top operational problems in your building or portfolio according to dollar value.
The Diagnostics page will automatically load a table of daily results across the portfolio for the previous day, sorted by avoidable costs followed by the highest combination of energy, maintenance, and comfort priorities.
To generate a new results table:
1) Select to view by whole building, equipment class, specific equipment, or analysis. The default is whole building. The Building view also allows you to view results across the portfolio.
2) Select your building from Building drop-down menu, or choose “View All” to view results across the portfolio.
3) Select a display interval. Diagnostics are performed each day, week, and calendar month.
4) Select a date range. The default is yesterday’s daily diagnostics.
5) To display only the top findings, select a number of priorities to display from the dropdown menu under “Top Priorities.”
6) Click “Generate Data”, and your table will appear. The sample table shown below was generated using daily interval data for October, 13 2015.
Features and Options:
Filter Results: You can filter by building, equipment class, equipment, analysis, or key words at the top of the page. For any one of these parameters, you can also choose “View All” instead of choosing a specific entry. For example, you could choose to view by “AHU coil analysis”, but then set equipment to “view all”, and you could generate a table of the AHU coil analysis results for every air handler. If you change the “View By” parameters using the top menus, you must click the “generate” button again.
Text Filter: The text filter box allows you to filter the results summaries by keywords. For example, filtering by the word “setpoint” will cause the page to display only issues found that include the word “setpoint”, such as “supply flow lower than setpoint” or “room air temp higher than setpoint.” Filtering by multiple words is the same as filtering by each word individually and combining the results. For example, filtering by “reset error” will include results such as “Supply temp reset error”, “Sensor error”, and “No static pressure reset”.
Tasks: The Tasks column shows the number of open tasks associated with the equipment and analysis in question. Clicking on the number of tasks will open the tasks page for that equipment and analysis.
Actions: At the far right of the page is a column titled Actions. This column contains dropdown arrows for each diagnostic result. Opening that dropdown menu gives options to view Equipment notes or variables, postpone analysis, report an inaccuracy, view result details, view raw data, create a new project, add to an existing project, or create a new task.
Priority Columns: “Cost”, “C” (Comfort), “E” (Energy), and “M” (Maintenance) are sortable priority columns. Higher priority values correspond to larger problems or greater energy waste.
Cost ($) is an estimate of the money wasted due to a fault or inefficiency if the cost wasted can be calculated using the data in the system.
Comfort Priority (0-10) is set when issues are found involving deviations from setpoint on data points such as room air temperature or supply air flow which may affect occupant comfort. Both the amount and the time spent deviating from the setpoint conditions contribute to the priority level.
Energy Priority (0-10) is a relative measure of the energy wasted by a fault or inefficiency if the energy wasted can be calculated using the data in the system. Priority level is set using the Annual Cost Threshold (which is an equipment variable), which refers to the annual dollar amount at which energy priority equals a ten. For example, if the Annual Cost Threshold is $10000, an issue wasting $27/day corresponds to an Energy Priority of 10, while an issue wasting $3/day corresponds to an Energy Priority of 1. If cost cannot be calculated, a small energy priority may still be applied to a result.
Maintenance Priority (0-10) is set when issues are found involving deviations from setpoint on data points such as room air temperature or supply air flow which may affect occupant comfort. Both the amount and the time spent deviating from the setpoint conditions contribute to the priority level.
Table Download
Click on either of the two buttons to download the desired diagnostics results.
(NOTE on the XLS file downloads: When you open the file, excel might tell you it doesn’t recognize the file format and ask if you want to continue to open it. Click “Yes” and it will open like any other XLS file.)