Continuous commissioning of a large university campus domestic hot water system

Texas A&M University central domestic hot water (DHW) system is a sub-system of the campus' 36.5 MW cogeneration, and serves a total of more than 6 million square feet of dormitory, office, classroom, library, hotel, restaurant, and lab spaces in 68 campus buildings, being one of the largest of such systems. In the last five years, more and more students complained about "cold showers" in their dorms. Some temporary measures were taken, but could not solve the problems completely and were wasting energy. It brought up great attention of the University's Physical Plant Department and Residence Life Department, who determined to completely resolve the issue, thus Continuous Commissioning (CC)1 process was decided to be implemented. Previous to field actions, a much simplified hydraulic model was built to study the distribution system characteristics for the best direction of CC. The results show the building circulation flow will remain within an acceptable range while the loads vary, which demonstrates manual balancing is applicable. Following that, a system-wide survey with field measurements was conducted to establish the baseline. After analysis performed from a system point of view, a detailed plan was proposed and carried out during the Christmas break. Primary CC results are positive and as expected. Currently, fine-tuning and follow-up CC is still in progress, but it has turned into an obvious success of CC and team work. Copyright (2006) by The Fairmont Press, Inc.

Continuous commissioning of a large university campus domestic hot water system Conference Paper