Ongoing commissioning of heat recovery process in a central heating and cooling plant

Ongoing commissioning aims at assessing and maintaining the performance of HVAC components in operation. Benchmarks describing the reference state are required in order to compare the incoming data collected by the building automation system against expected values. One approach is to develop inverse models from measured normal performance. The current thesis is based on data collected in a central heating and cooling plant operated in Montreal. As a measure of energy efficiency, heat rejected by the plant chillers is recovered for re-heating needs in the summer. This thesis presents the analysis of the plant thermal performance over three years of operation with a focus on the heat recovery process and the key equipment, a plate heat exchanger. Then, the proposed benchmarking approach is described. This is likely the first published ongoing commissioning methodology targeting liquid-to-liquid heat-recovery. It is based on a collection of metrics targeting the heat exchanger (Type A), and the process (Type B). Observations on the pertinence of including both perspectives are presented. The impact of the benchmarks training strategy is discussed, and the general formulation into a graphical user interface is described.