Equipment fault detection, diagnostics and disaggregation system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10083255-B2
Application number	US-201213715511-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 14, 2012
Priority date	Dec 14, 2012
Publication date	Sep 25, 2018
Grant date	Sep 25, 2018

Abstract

A system for fault detection and diagnostics of equipment. The system may also be capable of disaggregation and/or virtual submetering of energy consumption by equipment, such as that of heating, ventilation and air conditioning, lighting, and so forth, in a building. Vibration and current sensors, along with one or more algorithms, may be utilized for fault detection and diagnostics of equipment. Models may be developed to aid in deducing energy consumption of individual components of equipment, and the like, for a building.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A roof top unit fault detection and diagnostics appliance comprising:
a computer for connection to a roof top unit comprising a plurality of individual pieces of equipment each piece of equipment having a set of performance stages, the computer comprising: a listener module operatively coupled to a first and second controller for the roof top unit, the listener module configured to obtain sensor readings from the first controller and system values from the second controller to gather data points for each piece of equipment;
a repeater manager operatively coupled to the first and second controllers, the repeater manager configured to, using the computer, interrupt communication between the first and second controllers and reply to commands from the second controller intended for the first controller;
a baselining manager operatively coupled to the repeater manager and configured to, using the computer, command the repeater manager to interrupt communication between the first and second controllers and send commands to the first controller to enable each performance stage for each piece of equipment and measure a current draw for each enabled performance stage;
a disaggregation module operatively coupled to the baselining manager and configured to, using the computer, receive the measured current draw for each enabled performance stage and determine an actual energy consumed by each piece of equipment; and
a fault detection and diagnostic and efficiency monitoring module operatively coupled to the disaggregation module and the listener module, the fault detection and diagnostic and efficiency monitoring module configured to, using the computer, use the gathered data points to create a predicted energy consumption model for each piece of equipment, partition the predicted energy consumption models into a set of submodels, and compare the set of predicted energy consumption submodels to the actual energy consumed by an equipment subpart of the equipment to derive a performance degradation for each piece of equipment.

2. The appliance of claim 1 , wherein the fault detection and diagnostic and efficiency monitoring module detects equipment faults and/or operation inefficiencies in one or more heating, cooling and mechanical subsystems of the roof top unit based on the derived performance degradation.

3. The appliance of claim 2 , wherein the disaggregation module determines the actual energy consumed by an equipment subpart of the equipment by determining per-load energy consumptions from current data representing total power consumption by the equipment subpart of the equipment.

4. The appliance of claim 2 , wherein the computer further comprises a data logger module that is operatively coupled to the listener module and the disaggregation module and is configured to, using the computer, store the gathered data points and the actual energy consumed by each piece of equipment for access and analysis by the fault detection and diagnostic and efficiency monitoring algorithm module.

5. The appliance of claim 1 , wherein:
a pattern change in the performance degradation is compared with known pattern changes representing certain types of degradation and malfunction of each piece of equipment; and
if the pattern change matches a known pattern change, then a piece of equipment is considered to have a certain type of degradation or malfunction as represented by the known pattern change.

6. A virtual submetering system for a commercial building comprising:
one or more heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) devices, including a rooftop HVAC unit (RTU), a RTU controller, and a supervisory controller;
a computer communicatively coupled to the one or more HVAC devices, the RTU, the RTU controller, and the supervisory controller, the computer comprising a memory having a library and a processor;
a set of generic HVAC device models in the library for achieving a generality for particular devices corresponding to the one or more HVAC devices, each generic HVAC device model incorporating contributions from equipment subparts of a particular device;
wherein the processor is configured to:
obtain a generic model from the library that corresponds to the device;
obtain meter data for the device from a meter of the one or more HVAC devices;
adjust the generic model to obtain a total model for the device by estimating parameters of the generic model based on the obtained meter data;
partition the total model into a set of submodels, each submodel corresponding to at least one equipment subpart of the device; and
obtain an estimate of electricity consumed by an equipment subpart of the device using a submodel from the set of submodels that corresponds to the equipment subpart of the device.

7. The system of claim 6 , wherein the obtained meter data comprises contextual information about the device.

8. The system of claim 7 , wherein:
the contextual information of varying quality and/or degree is input into an optimizer in a form of constraints, the optimizer configured to generate coefficients for the total model for a whole commercial building electrical consumption;
the optimizer is provided with initial values and expected ranges of the estimated parameters derived from the contextual information.

9. The system of claim 8 , wherein disaggregation of the total model is performed using recursive versions of an algorithm of the optimizer.

10. The system of claim 8 , wherein the estimated parameters comprise at least one or more of supply and return air temperatures, outside air temperature, humidity, supply and return chilled water temperatures, control signals, operating schedules, and energy consumption of equipment.

11. The system of claim 8 , wherein:
the contextual information comprises mandatory contextual information and optional contextual information;
the mandatory contextual information comprises devices, and type and class of devices connected beyond a measurement point that is derived from a building ontology, wiring hierarchy data or wiring schemes, and data from a measurement point; and
the optional contextual information comprises one or more items comprising power consuming equipment information, nominal power consumption, cooling tonnage, and control strategy.

12. The system of claim 7 , wherein disaggregation of a commercial building load is performed in a batch mode or in an online mode.

Assignees

• Honeywell Int Inc

Inventors

• Majewski Joseph
• Fisera Radek
• Anglin Mark
• Gall Thomas

Classifications

• F24F11/32

  Responding to malfunctions or emergencies · CPC title

• F24F3/001

  in which the air treatment in the central station takes place by means of a heat-pump or by means of a reversible cycle (reversible cycle for humidifying and drying air F24F3/147) · CPC title

• G01H1/00

  Measuring {characteristics of} vibrations in solids by using direct conduction to the detector (G01H9/00, G01H11/00 take precedence) · CPC title

• F24F2221/16

  mounted on the roof · CPC title

• G06F2119/06

  Power analysis or power optimisation · CPC title