Collaboration Training Mentoring

Collaboration

Three areas for ongoing collaboration between F&O and R&D are smart grid, transactional control, facility re-tuning and audits, DSOM fault detection and automatic diagnostics. This collaboration can lead to expanding R&D opportunities.

Smart Grid: Transactional Control & Load Shedding/Demand Response

PNNL is a leader in smart grid demonstration that will advance smart grid concepts and bring substantial benefits to the Pacific Northwest and the nation.

The BOCC integration into Systems Engineering Building will allow for further demonstration of the smart grid using PNNL facilities. Collaborations between F&O and R&D all for the the data, programming and sequence on how to achieve load shedding and transactive control to be shared among the staff. Transactive control is energy, operational, and financial transactions between equipment and the electric power grid using applications, or "agents" that reside either on the equipment, on local building controllers or in the Cloud. The BOCC will be a demonstration area of these strategies and techniques on facilities at PNNL.

This will provide several benefits to F&O staff in terms of evaluating peak loads, understanding how to sequence loads to minimize peaks, and learning from R&D experts. Additionally, R&D will have a test bed to apply actual strategies in operating facilities to evaluate the impacts on occupants and the maintenance staff and on how to improve the load-shedding strategies. R&D is currently collaborating with F&O to apply VOLTTRON^™ and demonstrate Transactive control.

VOLLTRON is an open source distributed sensing and control platform developed by PNNL R&D staff for the DOE Building Technologies Office (BTO). This platform is being used to support multi-building load curtailment and other efficiency algorithms.

Facility Re-tuning & Audits

PNNL initiated the commercial facility re-tuning project for DOE's Building Technologies Office.

The goal of this project is to improve facility operations by transferring the skills to "re-tune" commercial facilities using a series of resources, including training programs and an online interactive training curriculum. The re-tuning training is intended to provide building operators, building managers, and energy service providers with the necessary skills to identify no- and low-cost operational problems that plague commercial facilities—and to provide the skills necessary to take corrective action.

This collaboration in the BOCC is used to improve the performance of PNNL facilities, increase knowledge of staff, but also to increase the effectiveness of the Building Performance Team by providing access to the operational staff and building data.

Decision Support for Operations and Management (DSOM) Fault Detection and Diagnostics

DSOM is a condition-based operations & maintenance software program designed to provide the facility staff with actions to implement efficient life-cycle asset management.

DSOM was developed by researchers at PNNL. PNNL uses DSOM in the F&O group for managing the PNNL campus.

Training

To maintain a highly skilled workforce, cross-training and mentoring occurs within the BOCC. The benefit of utilizing the BOCC is easy access to real-time data and control on multiple large display screens. Leveraging BOCC capabilities for cross-training allows for a higher level of training. The BOCC is the learning interface that best displays the information from the Building Automation System (BAS) and other operational data.

Mentoring

The BOCC staff mentors undergraduate engineers which provide them with invaluable information on the operation of facilities, systems and real-world experience and inspires the next generation of engineers.