THE FRONTIER PROJECT INTERACTIVE KIOSK

Transcription

1 Design & Engineering Services THE FRONTIER PROJECT INTERACTIVE KIOSK Prepared by: Design & Engineering Services Customer Service Business Unit Southern California Edison March 11, 2011 What s Inside Executive Summary... Technical Approach... Results... Conclusion

2 Southern California Edison s Design & Engineering Services (DES) group is responsible for this project. It was developed as part of Southern California Edison s Emerging Technology program under internal project number. DES project manager Brian James conducted this technology evaluation with overall guidance and management from Paul Delaney. For more information on this project, contact brian.james@sce.com. Disclaimer This report was prepared by Southern California Edison (SCE) and funded by California utility customers under the auspices of the California Public Utilities Commission. Reproduction or distribution of the whole or any part of the contents of this document without the express written permission of SCE is prohibited. This work was performed with reasonable care and in accordance with professional standards. However, neither SCE nor any entity performing the work pursuant to SCE s authority make any warranty or representation, expressed or implied, with regard to this report, the merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose of the results of the work, or any analyses, or conclusions contained in this report. The results reflected in the work are generally representative of operating conditions; however, the results in any other situation may vary depending upon particular operating conditions. Southern California Edison

3 ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS AgTAC CTAC DES EE FP SCE VFD Agricultural Technology Application Center Customer Technology Application Center Design and Engineering Services Energy efficient The Frontier Project Southern California Edison Variable frequency drive Southern California Edison Page i

4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Frontier Project Interactive Kiosk is a collaborative project with Southern California Edison and the Cucamonga Valley Water District to install an interactive kiosk highlighting the energy consumption of The Frontier Project s state-of-the-art energy efficient (EE) technologies. The Frontier Project is a 14,000 square foot demonstration building set to educate resident consumers, commercial builders, and sustainable advocates regarding the latest methods and technologies in water, energy, and site conservation. This project s goal is to install an interactive kiosk displaying the major EE technologies implemented in The Frontier Project in order to give users a comprehensive understanding of the energy consumption of a high-performing EE commercial building. The interactive touch-screen kiosk works by pulling real-time data from the major EE technologies represented in The Frontier Project, including the variable refrigerant flow (VRF) system, direct/indirect evaporative cooler, and domestic hot water and space heating systems. In addition to electricity consumption, the kiosk displays information on the building s EE design, water conservation techniques, natural gas consumption, photovoltaic solar array energy generation, and weather data. Users can access information on the kiosk by selecting any category visible on the main screen. While power demand and energy consumption is the primary focus of the kiosk, solar, weather, and green facts are also items featured on the kiosk. The interactive kiosk was installed and commissioned successfully as shown in Figure 1. The initial kiosk roll-out has limited capabilities, but will constantly be a work in progress. Training is provided to multiple Cucamonga Valley Water District employees that will enable the kiosk to be updated to create a more robust final display that will incorporate many additional kiosk features. Additional features may include syncing the kiosk to the building s automation system portal to allow the user to get a deeper look into how the EE components in the building are operating in real-time. In addition, the kiosk will be updated as new equipment is installed, or simply to keep the look and feel of the kiosk fresh. The efforts to install a kiosk at The Frontier Project site has sparked interest from Southern California Edison s Customer Technology Application Center (CTAC) and Agricultural Technology Application Center (AgTAC) to install similar kiosks or displays at their facilities. The content of the kiosks is expected to be the same, but each center will customize the displays to match the aesthetics of their respective sites. Southern California Edison Page 1

5 FIGURE 1. THE FRONTIER PROJECT INTERACTIVE TOUCH SCREEN KIOSK Further work is necessary in order to create a more robust kiosk that is furnished with information suitable for a more technical audience. Recommended improvements to the kiosk include enabling the electrical screen to show the user the current demand and energy consumption of the innovative EE technologies installed in the building. This includes adding a button the user can touch that brings up an image of the technology, its current energy consumption and power demand, and a brief description of how it operates. It is recommended that information gathered by the interactive kiosk be monitored on a regular basis in order to analyze demand and energy consumption of the EE technologies. The kiosk has the ability to trend historical data on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis, so this information will be readily available. This will lead to a better understand of energy consumption in a high performing EE commercial building. Southern California Edison Page 2

6 TECHNICAL APPROACH Despite the presence of two informational kiosks already present at the facility, The Frontier Project (FP) wanted an additional kiosk that could delve deeper into the technical aspects of some of the energy efficiency technologies incorporated into the state-of-the-art facility. Therefore, a proposal was made to install power monitoring equipment to be displayed on a new interactive touch screen kiosk for each of the following components: Variable refrigerant flow (VRF) system Fan Coil Units 6 and 9 Domestic Hot Water and Space Heating Systems Hot Water Return Pump 2 Boiler Hot Water Pump 3 Solar Hot Water Return Pump 4 Space Heating Pump 5 To decrease costs of the system, only one phase was monitored and the power was calculated for the remaining two phases. The building s existing energy management system was already capturing a significant amount of data using BACnet communication protocol. To avoid redundancy, the information that was deemed useful for the new kiosk was extracted and made available for the new display. The following components were collected from the existing system: Main building Photovoltaic generation Evaporative cooler supply fan VRF System Fan coil units 1-5 and 7-8 Heat recovery heat pump unit All of the data acquired is available for display within the kiosk. FP used this data along with an energy dashboard template to customize the display and content to meet their overall expectations. RESULTS The interactive touch screen kiosk was designed and installed at the FP site. The energy dashboard was formatted into five categories: Home, Electricity, Solar, Weather, and Green Facts. HOME The Home screen, shown in Figure 2, displays current whole building power demand, energy consumption, and photovoltaic power generation. Green tips are displayed in the corner. Southern California Edison Page 3

7 Users can advance to any of the other screens (Home, Electricity, Solar, Weather, and Green Facts) simply by touching the tab at the bottom for the category they want to learn more about. FIGURE 2. HOME SCREEN SCREENSHOT ELECTRICITY The Electricity screen shown in Figure 3, allows the user to dive deeper into the electrical consumption of the building by trending the energy consumption on a chart. The user has the ability to adjust the scale so the data is trended on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. The right side of the screen displays statistics about the current energy consumption, including the percentage difference in energy consumption from the previous week and the savings this figure equates to in either kilowatt-hours, dollars, a household of four, or kilograms of carbon dioxide. Southern California Edison Page 4

8 FIGURE 3. ELECTRICITY SCREENSHOT SOLAR The Solar screen shows the building s current photovoltaic power generation, as well as allows the user to trend the historical data on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. WEATHER The Weather screen shows current and historical weather conditions using information collected from an on-site weather station. GREEN FACTS The Green Facts screen shown in Figure 4 provides visitors with information on the building s green features, including passive solar design, mechanical cooling design, and the rain water storage system. The screen cycles through different features of the building, or allows the user to manually click through each screen to view all facts available. Southern California Edison Page 5

9 FIGURE 4. GREEN FACTS SCREENSHOT CONCLUSION The FP interactive touch screen kiosk enables visitors to gain a better understanding of how a high-performance building uses integrated building design and innovative technological features to limit energy consumption and generate power to offset demand. While basic information is currently available for the user simply searching for a general overview, more advanced technical information will be available in the future for the person who wishes to gain a deeper, technical knowledge on how each technology is currently operating. Future work is still required to enable the user to gather more detailed information on how each EE technology is operating. Monitoring equipment was installed to grant the kiosk access to such information, but the kiosk programming requires further development to make this information transparent to the user. Due to the abundance of useful information available in the FP kiosk, SCE s CTAC in Irwindale, CA and AgTAC in Tulare, CA have decided to construct FP kiosks for display at their respective sites in the near future. Southern California Edison Page 6