Award Number: DE-EE0008689 CX(s) Applied: A9, B3.6, B5.1 Building Technologies Office Location(s): NE Office(s): Golden Field Office
Office of NEPA Policy and Compliance
April 16, 2019Award Number: DE-EE0008689
CX(s) Applied: A9, B3.6, B5.1
Building Technologies Office
Location(s): NE
Office(s): Golden Field Office
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is proposing to provide federal funding to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for the development of methods to find faults in residential HVAC systems, including the design, development, and production of a remote monitoring device that would make measurements over time, process the results, and communicate those results back to a database. Based on a literature review, faults list, and diagnosis methodology, a research plan would be developed that includes overall research strategy and research questions, plans for test home experiments and field validation, analysis methods, and project management. The plan would also include test home identification criteria and data acquisition selection and preparation according to the proposed technical approach. Laboratory testing of air conditioners would be completed to refine the monitoring equipment design. Field studies would be conducted at private residences in the Omaha area, and subsequently in a representative range of geographical regions in the United States, to make observations about physical traits related to HVAC and house thermal performance. A subset of these homes would be selected where the developed remote monitoring device would be installed on the air conditioner. The exact residences where field studies would occur has yet to be determined.