Impact of installation faults in air conditioners and heat pumps in single-family homes on U.S. energy usage

Winkler, Jon; Das, Saptarshi; Earle, L.; Burkett, Lena; Robertson, Joseph; Roberts, David; Booten, Chuck

doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115533

Cited by 17 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Refrigerant charge and airflow faults in newly installed residential air conditioners and air-source heat pumps waste approximately 20.7 TWh of site energy annually and contribute to 9.6 million metric tons of unnecessary CO2 emissions (Winkler et al, 2020).…”

Section: Refrigerant Undercharge and Overcharge Faultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Residential HVAC Fault Data Collection Plan – Refrigerant Undercharge and Overcharge Faults

Yoon,

Jung,

et al. 2024

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Section: Refrigerant Undercharge and Overcharge Faultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Residential HVAC Fault Data Collection Plan – Refrigerant Undercharge and Overcharge Faults

Yoon,

Jung,

et al. 2024

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“…Other studies simulate the influence of hardware failures and soft errors typically caused by incorrect planning and installation practices or missing maintenance (e.g. Domanski et al 2014;Winkler et al 2020;Bellanco et al 2022). The authors name substantial performance drops caused by air duct or valve leakage, refrigerant over-and undercharge, oversized systems, the existence of non-condensable gases, low airflows, and evaporator fouling.…”

Section: Problems With Heat Pump Installationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification and classification of heat pump problems in the field and their implication for a user-centric problem recognition

Weigert

2022

Energy Inform

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Heat pumps are at the heart of the transition to sustainable heating in buildings. Yet, minor installation and setting errors add to unnoticed performance drops over the system’s lifetime. With the advent of smart meters that constantly measure electricity consumption, data patterns of heat pumps have become available, even for the many not connected to the Internet. These data hold the potential to monitor heat pumps continuously, identify issues, and thus assist energy consultants and heat pump owners in lifting hidden conservation potential. Yet, research and practice lack an overview of specific problems that could help in this task. In a mixed-method approach, this study investigated 228 protocols of on-site heat pump inspections in Switzerland and found 47 problem classes with varying frequencies. Based on this empirical data and expert interviews, a classification scheme for heat pump issues is proposed and validated. It uncovers the cause of problems, how and by whom they can be recognised and solved, and potential benefits. The work demonstrates that (i) several problems are likely to create smart meter patterns and that (ii) heat pump owners could be involved in the problem recognition and solving process if they get guidance (i.e. simple rules and instructions). Finally, this study discusses implications for developing information systems to automate and assist the recognition and solving of problems. Such information systems may raise not only the attention of heat pump owners but also trigger desired actions (i.e. request consultancy, inspect heat pump themselves).

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“…Contractors are the performers of the designed control system. To ensure that a new control system performs in the best possible way, care must be taken during installation to avoid errors that directly reduce the system's performance [112]. During the construction phase, control errors are either related to the improper installation of sensors and actuators or incorrect implementation of the sequences of operation by BAS integrators.…”

Section: Construction Phasementioning

confidence: 99%

Fault Detection and Diagnostics in Single-Duct Multiple-Zone Variable Air Volume Air Handling Unit Systems

Torabi

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Variable air volume (VAV) air handling unit (AHU) systems are the most common heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) configuration in North America's commercial buildings. They account for a large fraction of sensors and actuators and are prone to faults due to their control systems' complexity. This research fills the gap in VAV AHU fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) through four parts. First, inverse model-based virtual sensors are developed to detect actuator faults in AHUs. Three algorithms are explored to compensate for the lack of reliable intermediate sensor data for five AHUs. Results indicate that although generated models can act as virtual sensors to identify hard faults, they cannot isolate faults' root causes. To address this uncertainty, the second part introduces a holistic sequential hierarchical FDD framework considering the significance of zone-to-system hard and sequencing logic fault interactions in AHUs and VAVs. The proposed framework follows this fault-checking order: AHU hard faults, VAV hard faults, AHU sequencing logic faults, and VAV sequencing logic faults. Faults are detected by visualizing the discrepancies between the expected and measured operational behaviour. The third part focuses on VAV AHU control systems (sensors, actuators, and sequencing logic), studying human errors during design, installation, and operation. Human errors are identified through a literature review and interviews with control specialists. The most common errors are classified, and interview examples are listed for different building life cycle phases. Since a commonly reported error by interviewees is thermostat misplacement, resulting in negative impacts on AHU supply air temperature (SAT) setpoint, the last step of this research investigates the robustness of sequences of operation to such errors. Fault tolerance of the most vulnerable sequences: SAT setpoint, duct static pressure (DSP) ix

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Impact of installation faults in air conditioners and heat pumps in single-family homes on U.S. energy usage

Cited by 17 publications

References 6 publications

Residential HVAC Fault Data Collection Plan – Refrigerant Undercharge and Overcharge Faults

Residential HVAC Fault Data Collection Plan – Refrigerant Undercharge and Overcharge Faults

Identification and classification of heat pump problems in the field and their implication for a user-centric problem recognition

Fault Detection and Diagnostics in Single-Duct Multiple-Zone Variable Air Volume Air Handling Unit Systems

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