Smart Building Monitoring and Ongoing Commissioning: A Case Study with Four Canadian Federal Government Office Buildings

This paper presents a case study on the deployment of smart building monitoring and ongoing commissioning in Canadian federal government office buildings. The case study involved four office buildings with a total rentable space of about 100, 000 m2. Based on the measurement and verification results over a reporting period of 12 to 24 months, the four pilot buildings have demonstrated an average energy saving of 15%, which resulted in significant energy cost savings of about $818, 000 and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions of about 660 tons. The mechanism by which the savings are currently achieved in the pilot buildings is through the handling of the work orders generated by the deployed building energy management systems. These work orders are based on the detected faults, anomalies or inappropriate operations of the building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system. Further investigation is underway on the optimization of the HVAC controls according to building occupancy and weather conditions, and on the integration of HVAC and lighting controls.