Alexandria Engineering Journal (2016) 55, 811–818

H O S T E D BY
Alexandria University

Alexandria Engineering Journal

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Analysis of energy management for heating,

ventilating and air-conditioning systems
Mohamed Elhelw

Mechanical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Egypt

Received 19 December 2015; revised 16 January 2016; accepted 31 January 2016

Available online 18 February 2016

KEYWORDS Abstract In the office buildings, large energy is consumed due to poor thermal performance and
Saving energy; low efficiencies of HVAC systems. A cooling load calculation is a basis for the design of building
Modified bin method; cooling systems. The current design methods are usually based on deterministic cooling loads,
CLTD/SCL/CLF method; which are obtained by using design parameters. However, these parameters contain uncertainties,
EER; and they will be different from that used in the design calculation when the cooling system is put
VRV in use. The actual cooling load profile will deviate from that predicted in design. A modified bin
method was used in this paper to optimize the energy efficiency ratio (EER). A design optimization
method is proposed by considering uncertainties related to the cooling load calculation. Impacts
caused by the uncertainties of seven factors are considered, including the outdoor weather condi-
tions and internal heat sources. The cooling load distribution is analyzed. Comparison between
the modified bin method and CLTD/SCL/CLF method is also conducted. With the distributions
of their energy consumption, decision makers can select the optimal configuration based on quan-
tified confidence. According to the economic benefits and energy efficiency ratio, using modified bin
method will increase the overall energy efficiency ratio by 45.57%.
Ó 2016 Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an
open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction operating costs for building and its energy consuming systems.
A wide variety of building energy analysis methods are cur-
Energy is a vital factor for the success of all economies in the rently available to HVAC engineers and range from simple
immediate and long-term future. Since the energy crisis of to sophisticated one. The simplest methods involve the largest
1970 s, people needed to determine how much energy buildings number of simplifying assumptions and, therefore, tend to be
were using and to identify how that energy use could be the least accurate. The most sophisticated methods involve
reduced. This would have direct effects on building designers, the fewest assumptions and thus can provide the most accurate
managers, and owners. As a result, Building Energy Analysis results. In selecting the procedure to be used for a specific
(BEA) is becoming an important tool in the HVAC design project, it is important that the limitations of the procedure
field. BEA is the technique of estimating energy use and be recognized. Modified Bin Method is one of the most energy
analysis methods used. It estimates both heating and cooling
loads, using instantaneous energy calculation at many different
E-mail address: [email protected]
outdoor dry bulb temperature conditions, and multiplying the
Peer review under responsibility of Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria
University.
results by the number of hours of the occurrence of each

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2016.01.034
1110-0168 Ó 2016 Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
812 M. Elhelw

Nomenclature

A area (m2) inf infiltration

cp specific heat at constant pressure (J/kg K) L lighting
ESTD temperature difference (°C) lat latent
FPS fraction of possible sunshine o outside
hfg evaporation heat energy (J/kg) occ occupancy
qo heat energy per unit of floor area (W/m2) r room
SCi shading coefficient of fenestration component of s sensible
exposure (i) sg solar glass
T temperature (°C) sw solar wall
TSCL total solar cooling load (W/m2)
U heat transfer coefficient (W/(m2 K)) Abbreviations
Vo volume flow rate (m3/s) AHU air handling unit
AU average usage during the occupied or unoccupied
Greek symbols time periods
q density COP coefficient of performance
x humidity ratio of the air (kgw/kga) dbt dry bulb temperature
DX direct expansion
Subscripts EER energy efficiency ratio
a air Eff efficiency
c conduction HVAC heating ventilation and air conditioning
eq equipment PLF partial load fraction
i orientation number VRV variable-refrigerant-volume

condition. This procedure accounts for the part load perfor- revokes its original purpose. This has led to an increased inter-
mance of HVAC equipment and coefficient of performance est in modeling and real-time tracking of location, activity, and
of the HVAC system. The calculations are performed monthly thermal comfort of building occupants for HVAC energy
or annually, and for occupied and unoccupied building hours. management. To measure physical activity, Rana et al. [4]
Thus, several hundred calculations are used to characterize developed an activity classifier, which achieves 10% higher
building energy consumption, rather than 8760 h. accuracy compared to Support Vector Machine and
Many contributions have been made in the research to k-Nearest Neighbor. A multilayer perceptron ensemble was
improve the modified bin method to obtain more accurate selected by Wei et al. [5] to build the total energy model inte-
results and decrease the errors and the defects of this method grating three indoor air quality models, the facility tempera-
in order to get more precise results and increase the perfor- ture model, the facility relative humidity model, and the
mance of the calculations. One of the first developments in facility CO2 concentration model. To balance the energy con-
energy calculation is done by Fazli et al. [1]. They performed sumption and the indoor air quality, a quad-objective opti-
780 annual building energy simulations using BEopt and mization problem was constructed. The problem was solved
Energy Plus to predict the energy and cost impacts of realistic with a modified particle swarm optimization algorithm pro-
excess static pressures for typical new and existing single- ducing control settings of supply air temperature and static
family homes with both permanent split capacitor (PSC) blow- pressure of the air handling unit. Kusuda [6] work included
ers and electronically commutated motors (ECM) in 15 U.S. a comparison between the modified bin method and different
climate zones. Garnier et al. [2] modeled a real non- simulation programs (ECUBE, EASA, BLDSIM, BLAST,
residential building located in Perpignan using the Energy Plus DOE-2, AXCESS, and TRACE). This comparison showed a
software. They used the predicted mean vote (PMV) index as a similarity in the results if the simulation is done by the same
thermal comfort indicator and developed low-order ANN- user. Also Kusuda et al. [7] established the load as a function
based models to be used as controller’s internal models. A of outside dry bulb temperature by using the diversified loads
genetic algorithm allowed the optimization problem to be rather than peak loads. The modified bin method was extended
solved. Also they compared the proposed management strat- by Knebel [8] to calculate weekday/weekend and partial-day
egy with basic scheduling techniques. The factors that affect occupancy effects. To enhance the primary and secondary
the adoption behavior for residential Heating, Ventilating, equipment performance, the building load was calculated at
and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems were identified by two temperatures (peak cooling Tpc and peak heating Tph).
Noonan et al. [3]. Their study included a spatial and temporal Moreover, the advantages and disadvantages of using modi-
contagion effect, house characteristics, and other economic fied bin method were provided by Knebel and Silver [9]. In
and contextual factors. Reductions in HVAC (heating, ventila- another hand, a methodology for retrofit Canadian office
tion and air conditioning) energy consumption can be achieved buildings and screening energy efficiency was developed by
by limiting heating in the winter or cooling in the summer. Chidiac et al. [10]. Vadon [11] developed a linear equation
However, the resulting low thermal comfort of building occu- between the outside air temperature and solar insolation. In
pants may lead to an override of the HVAC control, which addition, Claridge et al. [12] compared the performance of
Analysis of energy management 813

hourly simulation program DOE-2 and improved modified bin
People.

procedure for different cases in each of four seasons. The
Equipment.
results of 80% of the cases examined were better when modi-
Infiltration.
fied bin method was used. In order to enhance energy perfor-
mance of retrofit buildings, EER strategies were developed All loads will be expressed as W/m2 of building conditioned
[13]. A lot of the researches showed that EER could have great floor area.
achievements if it is correctly achieved. To choose the suitable
technologies, an optimization process with a comprehensive 3.1. Solar gain through the glass
consideration of the economic benefits and the energy effi-
ciency must be done [14]. The crucial role in optimizing the Solar gain through glass often represents a major cooling load
air-conditioning system in retrofit buildings was proposed by and is highly variable with time and orientation.
Ding et al. [15]. It is played in emission reduction and energy The average solar load component for glass is computed
efficiency improvement. with the following:
X
n

2. Scope and objective q_sg ¼ ðTSCLi Þ  Ai  SCi  FPS=Afloor ð1Þ

1

Unlike the previous studies, this paper presents a method for a where
deep building air conditioning system design based on the X
24

whole building’s thermal analysis with cooling demand reduc- TSCLi ¼ ðSCLj Þ ð2Þ
j¼1
tion, in particular, focus. This work was set against recom-
mended practice office building energy benchmarks in Egypt, In the above equation, the total solar cooling load is calcu-
and following a comprehensive building audit. The scope of lated by making a summation of all the values of the solar
this study aimed to study the modified bin method usage and cooling loads for the 24 solar hours.
performance in calculating the cooling and heating loads, the The fraction of possible sunshine (FPS) is calculated for
cooling and heating energy, the energy cost, the coefficient of August and January by the following:

Average monthly sun hours

FPS ¼ ð3Þ
Number of days for the selected month  Maximum number of sun shine hours

performance and EER. Also, a comparison is made between For each zone, the solar contribution for the glass is calcu-
the modified bin method and CLTD/CLF/SCL method by cal- lated in August and January. For the approximation of the
culating the energy consumption of each method and deter- seasonal variation of the solar load, a linear relationship of
mining the best method with combined consideration of the solar load with outside air temperature is assumed. The lin-
feasibility and the building energy efficiency. ear relationship for the solar gain through glass is derived by
calculating the solar load for August and January and then
3. Cooling load calculations using modified bin method by using the outdoor design temperatures for the summer
and winter seasons; two linear equations can be formed in
The modified bin method establishes the load as a function of the form:
outdoor dry-bulb temperature. Moreover, it includes HVAC q_sg ¼ aTo þ b ð4Þ
distribution system and plant equipment effects (capacity
and efficiency) in energy calculations. In this method, average where a, b are two constants.
solar gain profiles, average equipment and lighting profiles and By solving the two linear equations, the values of the two
cooling load temperature difference values are used to charac- constants (a, b) are calculated, and the linear relationship of
terize the time-dependent load. Time dependencies resulting the solar gain through glass can be derived as a function of
from scheduling are averaged either over a selected period or the outdoor temperature.
over multiple calculations. Normally, two calculation periods,
representing occupied and unoccupied hours, are sufficient, 3.2. Solar gain through walls and roof
although any number can be used.
The components of the load profile are as follows: Walls and roofs of buildings consist of various layers of mate-
rials, and the structure and operating conditions of the walls

Solar gain through the glass. and the roofs may differ significantly from one building to

Solar gain through walls and roof. another.

Conduction gains through the glass, walls, and roof. The average solar load component for a wall or roof is

Lights. computed with the following:
814 M. Elhelw

q_sw ¼ Ui  Ai  ESTDi  FPS=Afloor ð5Þ 3.6. Equipment

The linear relationship for the solar gain through walls and
roof can be formed in the form: There are many types of appliances and equipment in restau-
rants, schools, office buildings, hospitals, and other types of
q_sw ¼ aTo þ b ð6Þ buildings. Heat generated in conditioned spaces by electric
where a, b are two constants and can be calculated so the solar appliances such as refrigerator, freezer, TV, computers, print-
gain through walls and roof can be written as a function of the ers, and copiers can be significant, and thus, must be consid-
outdoor temperature. ered when determining the cooling load of a building.
The equipment and appliances used in the conditioned
3.3. Transmission gain through the glass, walls and roof space may be sensible or latent loads, and sometimes both.
The equipment component is computed with the following:
Transmission is the process of transferring heat through a q_eq ¼ ðAvg: equipmen tusageÞ  ðMax: equipment loadÞ=Afloor
solid, such as a wall, roof, floor, ceiling, window, or skylight.
It occurs due to the temperature difference between the outside ð10Þ
surface temperature and inside temperature of a wall or roof or And because it has a constant value, so it is not a function
window. of the outdoor temperature.
The conduction component is computed with the following:
3.7. Ventilation and Infiltration
q_c ¼ Ui  Ai  ðTo  Tr Þ=Afloor ð7Þ
The load component due to ventilation or infiltration is a func-
3.4. Lights tion of the outdoor dry bulb and wet bulb temperatures. This
load is calculated for summer and winter and for occupied and
Some of the energy emitted by the lights are in the form of unoccupied periods. The sensible component of infiltration is
radiation that is absorbed in space and transferred later to computed with the following:
the air by convection and the other portion of the energy from _ ¼ qa  Cp  Voa  ðTo  Tr Þ=Aroom
qinf;s ð11Þ
lights is in the form of convective heat, which is picked up
instantaneously by the air-conditioning apparatus. Under While the latent component of infiltration is computed by
actual operating conditions, the total installed lighting may the following:
not be operated continuously during the occupied period. This _ ¼ qa  hfg  Voa  ðxo  xr Þ=Aroom
qinf;lat ð12Þ
will tend to reduce the average heat gains so it may be neces-
sary to plot the lighting schedule to find a realistic average.
The light component is computed with the following: 3.8. Total building loads

q_L ¼ ðAvg: Lighing usageÞ  ðMax: Lighting loadÞ=Afloor The load calculations are performed separately for the occu-
ð8Þ pied (normal operation) and unoccupied (night operation)
time periods and then totalized to get the total cooling and
The lighting load is not a function of the outdoor temper- heating loads for the occupied and unoccupied periods.
ature, so it has a constant value. The air-conditioning equipment capacity and power input
are expressed as a function of outdoor temperature by select-
3.5. Occupancy ing two operating capacities and temperatures and then fitting
these points to a linear equation. By solving the two equations,
Heat given off by people usually constitutes a significant frac- the values of the two constants (a, b) are calculated and the lin-
tion of the sensible and latent heat gain of a building, and may ear relationship for the equipment capacity is established. The
dominate the cooling load in high occupancy buildings such as same procedures are applied to deduce the linear relationship
theaters and concert halls. The latent heat gain is considered as for power input.
instantaneous because it goes directly into the air in space so Practically all manufacturers’ performance data assume
this component directly becomes cooling load with no delay. full-load steady state operation but in fact, the equipment
The sensible heat gain from people is not converted directly operates at partial load most of the time so it must be com-
to the cooling load. The radiant portion is first absorbed by puted. The partial load fraction (PLF) is computed for the
the surroundings and convected to space at a later time, occupied and unoccupied periods.
depending on the characteristics of the room and furnishings. PLF ¼ 1  Dc  ð1  Building Load=Unit CapacityÞ ð13Þ
The occupancy component is computed with the following:
The degradation coefficient (Dc) may be specified by the
_ ¼ ðAvg: occupancy usageÞ  ðMax: occupancy loadÞ=Afloor
qocc manufacturer or taken as 0.25 as a default value according
ð9Þ to the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute (ARI) in
the USA. When the building load exceeds the unit capacity,
The occupancy load is calculated for the occupied period
the PLF is assumed to be 1.0 because the unit will run contin-
only. The average usage is obtained for this period. The occu-
uously. The part load can be calculated for day and night
pancy load has two components: sensible and latent, which are
periods.
calculated separately. It is not a function of the outdoor tem-
perature, so it has a constant value. Part load ¼ PLF  Cooling or Heating load ð14Þ
Analysis of energy management 815

The run time for the air conditioning equipment can be esti- condensers placed on the roof and 157 indoor units while the
mated for day and night period from the following equations: DX system consists of 2 air-cooled condensers also in the roof
and 2 AHU located above the theater.
Day run time ¼ Day Load  Occupied hours=Capacity
 Day PLF ð15Þ 5. Results and discussions

Night run time ¼ Night Load 5.1. Energy conversation analysis

 Unoccupied hours=Capacity
5.1.1. Analysis of weather data
 Night PLF ð16Þ
The day is divided into occupied (day) and unoccupied (night)
After calculating the run time of the equipment, it is easy to periods. For each period, the time-dependent loads are aver-
calculate the cooling and heating energy from the following: aged and added to the conduction loads such that the load is
Energy ¼ Power input  ðDay run time characterized as a function of outside air temperature for the
calculated period. The bin intervals that are measured in six
þ Night run timeÞ ð17Þ daily 4-h shifts are usually 3 °C [16,17]. The cooling period
The coefficient of performance for the used equipment in Alexandria started from May 1st to October 22nd. Also
(COP) is a ratio of heating or cooling provided to electrical the occupied period is considered from 7:30 to 18:30. From
energy consumed, and the Energy Efficiency Ratio of the the meteorological data, the highest outdoor dry bulb temper-
equipment (EER) is the ratio of output cooling energy (in ature is 38 °C and the lowest is 17 °C during the summer per-
BTU) to input electrical energy (in W h), they both can be cal- iod. From the bin weather data, which are shown in Fig. 1, it
culated easily from the following: can be observed that the bin interval (27.5–30.5 °C) represents
the highest incidence by 26.14% of the total normal operating
COP ¼ Cooling or Heating Capacity=Power Input ð18Þ time. The maximum value for the bin interval is 36.5-39.5 °C
EER ¼ 3:412  COP ð19Þ which forms 1.87% of the normal cooling period.

5.1.2. Building load calculation using modified bin method

4. Case study
The schedule of the occupied and unoccupied period is neces-
sary to be known in order to calculate each component of the
An administration building for a University located in Alexan- cooling loads. This schedule can be determined by making a
dria, Egypt (latitude = 31.2°N and longitude = 29.95°E, at survey of the object building. Tables 2–4 show this schedule
6.7 m above sea level), was chosen as a case study. It consists for studied buildings. The cooling loads were calculated based
of offices and a theater. The building consists of 3 floors with on previous equations, and the following linear functions were
5 m height and 2326.52 m2 floor area for each floor. To reduce obtained
the cooling and heating requirements, reflective double glazed
windows were used. Wall and roof were provided with suffi- CL ¼ 3:3176 To þ 42:3 ð20Þ
cient insulation to obtain the maximum U-values shown in Table 5 shows the results of calculating the building loads
Table 1. The indoor air conditions shall be 22 ± 1 °C dry bulb in each temperature bin. The air conditioning load of the
temperature in offices and 24 ± 1 °C dry bulb temperature object building is 1175.07 kW while the cooling load per unit
and 50 ± 5% relative humidity in the theater. The philosophy area is 168.36 W/m2.
of the HVAC design was based on green building design which
recommends Energy conservation, less electrical consumption, 5.1.3. Building load calculation using CLTD/SCL/CLF method
and higher reliability. To achieve this aim, the modified bin
The CLTD/CLF/SCL calculation method is a manual load
method, and the CLTD/SCL/CLF method were used in calcu-
calculation method that is based on transfer function
lating the cooling and heating loads. Based on meteorology
method. This method was subjected to several revisions to
data, calculations were made for August and January because
they represent the warmest and coldest months of the year.
Owing to the possibility to introduce fresh air to the the-
ater, DX system was regarded as a considerable choice. On
the other hand, VRV system was the suitable choice to under-
take part of the heating and air-conditioning loads in areas
where individual operation is needed. Therefore, two HVAC
systems were used. The VRV system consists of 11 air-cooled

Table 1 Heat transfer coefficients.

Building envelop
Uwall 0.4 W/m2 °C
Uroof 0.3 W/m2 °C
Uwindow 2.8 W/m2 °C Figure 1 Temperature bin distribution of the normal operation
SC 0.21
cooling period.
816 M. Elhelw

Table 2 Lighting weekly schedule.

Time 12 AM 1 AM 2 AM 3 AM 4 AM 5 AM 6 AM 7 AM 8 AM 9 AM 10 AM 11 AM
AU 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.3 0.3 0.5 0.5 0.3 0.3
Time 12 PM 1 PM 2 PM 3 PM 4 PM 5 PM 6 PM 7 PM 8 PM 9 PM 10 PM 11 PM
AU 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.5 0.95 0.95 0.5 0 0 0 0

Table 3 Occupancy weekly schedule.

Time 12 AM 1 AM 2 AM 3 AM 4 AM 5 AM 6 AM 7 AM 8 AM 9 AM 10 AM 11 AM
AU 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.3 0.3 0.8 0.95 0.95 0.95
Time 12 PM 1 PM 2 PM 3 PM 4 PM 5 PM 6 PM 7 PM 8 PM 9 PM 10 PM 11 PM
AU 0.95 0.7 0.8 0.95 0.95 0.95 0.7 0.3 0 0 0 0

Table 4 Equipment weekly schedule.

Time 12 AM 1 AM 2 AM 3 AM 4 AM 5 AM 6 AM 7 AM 8 AM 9 AM 10 AM 11 AM
AU 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.3 0.8 0.95 0.95 0.95
Time 12 PM 1 PM 2 PM 3 PM 4 PM 5 PM 6 PM 7 PM 8 PM 9 PM 10 PM 11 PM
AU 0.95 0.8 0.7 0.95 0.95 0.95 0.5 0.5 0 0 0 0

environmental conditions and building parameters. The results

Table 5 Cooling load calculations.
of cooling load calculation based on CLTD/SCL/CLF method
Bin interval (°C) Cooling period (7:30 AM to 6:30 PM) show that it required cooling load equals 1319.57 kW.
Time (h) Load (W/m2)
20 356 108.65 5.2. Energy conservation comparison
23 758 118.6
26 719 128.55 The cooling load comparison was made between the results
29 935 138.51 from using modified bin method and CLTD/SCL/CLF
32 610 148.46 method. Fig. 2 shows that the solar gain through glass and
35 122 158.41 infiltration values are near to each other, and the deviation
38 67 168.36
between them equals +8.37% and +5.026% respectively.
But the other load deviation is between +17.78% and
accommodate the problems that rose from approximations +34.98%.
and limitations to cover more accurate tabulated data. The Fig. 3 illustrates the expected energy consumption for each
CLTD, SCL, and CLF vary with time and are a function of interval bin temperature by using Eqs. (13)–(17) when the

Figure 2 Cooling load comparison.

Analysis of energy management 817

according to the change of the outdoor temperature and

make a full prediction, which helps in sizing the proper
air conditioning equipment.

For the practical EER projects, the results obtained from
using modified bin method simulation, which are calculated
based on dynamic loads, are accurate enough.

Comparing the modified bin method with the CLTD/CLF/
SCL method according to loads, the values of the loads and
the error percentage showed that the modified bin method is
more accurate and precise.

The energy saved by using modified bin method is higher
than that of using CLTD/CLF/SCL method. Using modi-
fied bin method will save energy by 45.57% while the other
Figure 3 Air-conditioning energy consumption using modified method will save energy by only 33.42%. The environmen-
bin method. tal benefits would also be realized with energy conservation
benefits in the long run.

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