Transforming

Commercial Building
Operations

September 2022
Authors: J. Granderson, G. Lin, M. Pritoni, Y. Chen
This work was supported by the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy,
Building Technologies Office, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.
The U.S. Department of Energy and Berkeley Lab have
partnered with the smart buildings industry to deliver
self-correcting and optimized building controls.

The nation’s leading building analytics companies are

using Berkeley Lab-developed solutions to transform
client operations and maintenance, reduce green-
house gas emissions, and bring widespread clean
electricity integration.

The Economic, Business, and Climate

Importance of Our Built Environment
We spend nearly 90% of our time indoors,1 and the buildings
we spend that time in are critical to both our economy and
our climate, with an enormous impact on American lives
and business bottom lines. The real estate and construction
industries alone account for 17% of GDP,2 and 34% of our
nation’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions3 are
attributable to commercial and residential buildings.

Landmark studies from the U.S. Department of Energy have

shown that without continuous intervention, commercial
building controls routinely fall out of tune. Not only do these
control problems drive up emissions and energy bills, they
also compromise occupant comfort and productivity, reduce
equipment life, and hinder the reliable coordination of building
power needs with a carbon-free electricity supply.

On average, improved commercial building controls have

the potential to save 29% in energy use and associated To close the gap between the potential
greenhouse gas emissions, as well as potential for peak load
and the reality of today’s building
sheds of 19%.4 The energy impact alone amounts to $17
billion in potential savings to business owners. controls, Berkeley Lab researchers
and the smart buildings industry have
Encouragingly, long-standing “commissioning” services have joined forces to deliver the first ever
been used to cost-effectively address a portion of this waste, technology to automatically find and
generating average savings of 6%. Paired with smart building correct controls problems.
analytics technologies, savings can reach 9% with two-year
paybacks.5,6

1 Klepeis, N.E., et al. 2001. The national human activity pattern survey (NHAPS): A resource for assessing exposure to environmental
pollutants. Journal of Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology 11. https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.jea.7500165.
2 Bureau of Economic Analysis. 2022. Interactive Data: Interactive Access to Industry Economic Accounts Data Available from: https://
apps.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=150&step=2&isuri=1&categories=gdpxind, accessed June 9, 2022.
3 U.S. Energy Information Administration. 2022. Annual Energy Outlook: Table 18.
4 Fernandez, N., Katipamula, S., Wang, W., Xie, Y., Zhao, M., Corbin, C. 2017. Impacts of commercial building controls on energy savings
and peak load reduction. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. May. PNNL-25985.
5 Crowe, E., Mills, E., Poeling, T., Curtin, C., Bjørnskov, D., Fischer, L., Granderson, J. 2020. Building commissioning costs and
savings across three decades and 1500 North American buildings. Energy and Buildings 227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
enbuild.2020.110408.
6 Kramer, H., Lin, G., Curtin, C., Crowe, C., Granderson, J. Proving the business case for building analytics. Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, October 2020. https://doi.org/10.20357/B7G022. Page 2
Changing the Status Quo for Figure 1a. Analytics and control optimization
have historically been siloed across different
Smart Buildings Software products

Smart building software products have tended to come
in two distinct flavors. The first are those that provide
“extra-supervisory” control optimization, augmenting
the supervisory building automation system (BAS).
These are commonly referred to as automated system
optimization (ASO) technologies.6 The second are those
that apply analytics to continuously detect and diagnose
control and equipment faults, drawing data from the
BAS. These are commonly referred to as fault detection
and diagnostic (FDD) technologies.6
Historically, FDD products have offered analyt-
ics capabilities, using data from sensors, me-
ters, and building automation systems; ASO
products have offered extra-supervisory con-
trol optimization, exchanging data and control
commands with the BAS.

For the first time we have integrated

ASO and FDD capabilities, bringing opti-
mal control capability to analytics prod-
ucts and enhancing the capabilities of
the BAS. This was accomplished in
partnership with CopperTree Analytics,
Clockworks, and a SkyFoundry imple-
menter — market-leading companies
who serve nearly 1 billion square feet of
commercial floor area.

Figure 1b. Today, analytics and control

optimization are integrated, enhancing the BAS.
Today, we have merged analytics and optimal
control to automatically find and fix equipment
By integrating optimal control and diagnostics
and control problems as they arise.
capabilities we can now:

 Reserve operations and maintenance staff

expertise for the hardest problems by auto-
matically fixing controls errors and clearing the
backlog of repetitive manual work.

 Maintain efficient in-tune building operations

across diverse control systems, versions, and
vendors, avoiding wasted energy and emis-
sions of up to 30%.

 Scale the delivery of low-carbon load-flexible

buildings through software-based commercial
product infrastructure.

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Automatically Resolving the Most Market Applicability and Early
Common and Impactful Building Adopters
Controls Problems This new technology is applicable to small buildings with
packaged heating ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC)
Corrective logic for the most common and most readily
systems, as well as large buildings with built-up systems.
addressable controls problems4 has been developed,
tested, and published for ready integration into commercial Industry stakeholders have identified specific commercial
products. This includes: verticals as having high potential for adoption: higher
• Automated loop tuning to eliminate control hunting due education (non-lab buildings), K–12 schools, offices, and
to improper settings in a proportional-integral-derivative multi-site retail.
controller
• Implementation of Guideline 36 reset strategies for Early adopter organizations include:
static pressure and supply air reset
• Mitigation of rogue zones
• Optimized zone temperature setpoint setback
• Optimized economizer high lockout temperature setpoint Implemented at Implemented at Implemented at
• Correction of incorrectly programmed HVAC schedules
• Release of unnecessary control overrides
• Correction of biased temperature sensors

Figure 2. Simplifying fault resolution

In the business-as-usual case, once a control fault is detected by an FDD tool, staff must initiate a request for the problem to
be resolved. Another party then manually modifies the BAS programming. Once the work is complete, the FDD tool user can
confirm the fault is no longer present. This process takes weeks to months (or longer) to complete. Now, with the availability
of software that combines FDD and optimal control, these faults can be resolved within hours, in just one step.

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Learn More Technical and
Supporting Details
Two publications describe the logic underlying each fault
correction strategy; how they were implemented in the
CopperTree, Clockworks, and SkySpark environments; and
results from testing them in occupied buildings.
1) Development and Implementation of Fault-Correction
Algorithms in Fault Detection and Diagnostics Tools,
Energies, 2020
2) From fault-detection to automated fault correction: A
field study, Building and Environment, 2022
Galvanizing Nationwide Impact
Smart building software technologies are already used in
a growing portion of the commercial building stock. Those
that integrate analytics and extra-supervisory optimal
control therefore offer an on-ramp to rapidly deploy healthy,
low-emission grid-integrated buildings.
Berkeley Lab is excited to work with our partners across
industry to continue to bring these capabilities to our
nation’s buildings. With a national annual savings
potential in excess of 90 million metric tons carbon dioxide
equivalent, as well as $11 billion dollars, the climate and
economic benefits are tremendous.
Want to learn how to
transform buildings?
Building owners: please contact us to learn
more about how to acquire and use these
technologies.
Software providers: please contact us for
assistance to incorporate these open-source
corrective solutions into your products, and
to extend the current library.
Contact Jessica Granderson at
JGranderson@lbl.gov
“The work that Berkeley Lab is doing to promote
automated  commissioning  will change the
game for building energy management and
operations. It is a big next step in the evolution
of smart buildings: fixing control problems with
the push of a button, locking in savings, and
directing staff time to where it’s most needed.”
Michael Robbins, Lockheed Martin
(contract, Emory University)
“I’ve struggled my whole career to keep up with
manual control modifications to make sure that
building HVAC systems are  running error-free.
We are now able to use our SkySpark software to
push optimal control strategies to the buildings
across our campus. This is providing huge added
value to ongoing commissioning program, and
also providing a pathway to complementary
load flexibility solutions.”
Chris Weyandt, Sustainable Berkeley Lab
“The biggest challenge we see in our work with
facilities organizations is the lack of qualified
personnel and resources to address the “no-
brainer” issues that make sense economically
and environmentally.  We are excited to have
successfully tested fault auto-correction on
a Schneider Electric site and look forward to
scaling these solutions to maximize limited
maintenance resources.”
Nick Gayeski, Clockworks Analytics
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