Many highly sustainable commercial buildings as well complex facilities such as laboratories, often use sophisticated control systems in order to increase their energy efficiency. Unfortunately facility maintenance staffs are often overtaxed with just responding to comfort complaints and don’t have time to analyze building system performance. As a result control systems degrade and with no one complaining about resultant drops in energy efficiency, building energy use typically rises over time.

This presentation will focus on an example of how research laboratories can be made more intelligent and efficient using demand based control approaches to vary air change rates based on the actual measurement of real time indoor environmental quality. With this approach laboratory energy usage can be cut by as much as 50%. However once this dramatic energy reduction has been achieved how can it be maintained over time? The presentation will then discuss how intelligent agent systems can be used to analyze a wide range of real time building data including HVAC system performance and indoor environment data to alert operators to system degradation and problems that cut a lab’s energy efficiency. Sometimes referred to as real time commissioning, these analytical systems often use dashboards and other very graphical visualization methods to help buildings realize their energy efficiency entitlements and provide a healthier indoor environment over the life of the building versus just when they are opened.

Gordon Sharp Brief Bio

Gordon Sharp is the chairman of Aircuity, Inc. and has over 25 years of wide-ranging entrepreneurial experience and more than 25 U.S. patents in the fields of energy efficiency and laboratory controls. As founder, former president and CEO of Phoenix Controls, he led the development of this world leader in laboratory airflow controls that was acquired by Honeywell in 1998.  In 2000, Gordon founded Aircuity, which was spun out of Honeywell and is a smart airside energy efficiency company.

Gordon is a graduate of MIT with bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering.  He is Executive Vice President and a member of the board of directors of I2SL (International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories), the nonprofit foundation that operates the Labs21 conference. He is also member of two important standards on ventilation: the ANSI/AIHA Standard Z9.5 Committee on Laboratory Ventilation and the ASHRAE SSPC 170 Committee on Ventilation of Health Care Facilities.