IDeAs - Energy Control & Monitoring

Daylighting	Natural ventilation/radiant heat	Ground Source Heat	Integrated design
Advanced Glazing & Insulation	Energy-saving office equipment	Renovation Not Green-field
Energy-efficient lighting	Energy Control & Monitoring	Building-integrated photovoltaics

One of the goals for this project is to monitor the actual energy consumption of all the various systems installed in the building and to better understand their performance.

As a designer of sustainable and high efficiency electrical and lighting systems, IDeAs is aware that there is a scarcity of measured data on the performance of various control systems and energy efficiency strategies.

The building has an electrical energy monitoring system that will allow collection of detailed data on actual building performance.

With energy load reduced by 60% of the ASHRAE 90.1 energy budget, the Z² building can run off its solar power source.

	Building Monitoring System The building incorporates panelboards using a power monitoring harness manufactured by Square "D" to monitor the performance of the building on a circuit-by-circuit basis. This will allow the design team to monitor each component of the HVAC system, lighting circuits and receptacle circuits, as well as develop data to measure performance of the various systems. Combined with the weather data available from the photovoltaic system, the design team anticipates being able to perform in depth analysis to research how various systems interact, compare the accuracy of the daylighting and energy modeling software and better understand how to fine-tune an integrated design. The system will also allow energy-monitoring data to be automatically posted online. Eventually, IDeAs would like to make this data available to other researchers.
	Photovoltaic Monitoring The photovoltaic system will be monitored including real time AC voltage, current, and watts, real time DC voltage, current, and watts, and cumulative AC and DC energy generated. Weather data, which affects the performance of both the PV system and the building, will be monitored as well, including: ambient temperature, photovoltaic cell temperature, wind speed and direction, and external irradiance.
	Upsized Wiring All circuits lose small amounts of energy through resistance as power flows through the wiring. In this building, wires were upsized, so resistance in the wires is lower, reducing losses and the associated cooling loads.
	Power Transformer/Inverter System The backbone of the building’s electrical energy system is the power transformer and inverter system that converts the DC energy coming down from the rooftop solar source into AC energy to run the office equipment and infrastructure.