DA-88-09-1 -- An Expert System for Building Energy Consumption Analysis: Applications at a University Campus PDF

Significant amounts of energy waste in buildings can be attributed to everyday operational and maintenance practices. A new technique, using statistical forecasting and expert systems, has demonstrated a significant ability to reduce such waste. Experience at a university shows that the expert system contributes to energy savings by keeping a building at efficient levels of operation through monitoring, analysis, and use of a rule base that diagnoses commonly occuring day-to-day problems.

In addition to the expert systems, an action-oriented team approach has been developed to assist with the implementation of the program. The fully developed approach automatically identifies, tracks, and, together with the action team, corrects wasteful operational and maintenance procedures. This approach is based on a prototype that was developed for a university student recreation center (Haberl and Claridge 1987). Average paybacks for the campus buildings are less than two years.

The results from the applications, refinements in the approach since the previous paper (Haberl and Claridge 1987), and guidelines for future development are presented in this paper.

Units: Dual