ASHRAE approved funding totaling $575,383 for seven research projects in the areas of design tool, operation and maintenance tools, indoor air quality, comfort and health, refrigeration, environmentally safe materials and energy conservation at its 2003 Winter Meeting held in Chicago Jan. 25-29.

Among them is 1092-TRP, Development of Procedures To Determine In-Situ Performance of Commonly Used Hvac Systems. The principal investigators are Mingsheng Liu, Ph.D. P.E., Energy Systems Laboratory, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NE, and D.E. Claridge, Ph.D., P.E., and Jeff Haberl, Ph.D., P.E., Energy Systems Laboratory, Texas A&M University. The project is expected to take 18 months to complete with ASHRAE contributing $89,841.

Recent studies have shown that hvac system models, originally developed for design purposes, are equally useful for detecting and assessing the impact of operation and maintenance measures and for identifying energy retrofit savings when monitored data are available.

"However, the effectiveness of these models as fault detectors and savings meters is based on the ability to calibrate them satisfactorily against monitored data," Liu said.

The research will focus on documenting known algorithms to calibrate data from existing buildings. This project will benefit professionals involved in building commissioning and energy conservation by:

• Widening the acceptance and applicability of calibrated simplified systems simulations in the analysis of actual performance of hvac building mechanical systems;

• Providing material for hvac building energy analysis book publishers as an aid for developing more effective texts and training programs;

• Serving as a resource for the future development of hvac system fault detection procedures;

• Imparting better understanding of why and how calibrated building energy software programs can be used to improve hvac performance and indoor air quality;

• Providing the necessary step-by-step instructions for building energy professionals to perform the calibration to energy use data of buildings whose performance they are charged to track;

• Providing a well-documented procedure to develop lumped and simplified models using short-term data should help energy professionals verify savings without having to install long-term metering.