Automatic Commissioning of AHU Sensors for Enhancing Building Lifecycle Performance

HVAC systems seldom perform as intended under the original design concept. As a qualityoriented process, commissioning should be conducted regularly or continuously throughout the building lifecycle. Considering labor, time and cost consumed by manual commissioning, automatic commissioning is more competent for lifecycle commissioning. This paper investigates existing techniques for implementing automatic commissioning. It is found that, although many efforts have been put into developing automatic commissioning techniques, sensor validation was always overlooked. Accurate sensor measurements are prerequisite to reliable commissioning. This paper presents a diagnostic tool for automatic commissioning of sensors in typical air-handling units (AHU). The diagnostic tool implements a robust sensor fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) strategy based on the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method. The diagnostic tool is integrated in a real BAS for automatic commissioning of AHU sensors in a simulated building. The application of automatic online commissioning of AHU sensors is demonstrated.