Matching HVAC Performance to Its Potential
Energy Manager Today, March 6, 2015
High efficiency HVAC systems have the potential to achieve efficiencies as high as 98 percent. However, these ratings are generally only achieved under ideal conditions. Real-world energy efficiency is often much lower. If ducts or radiators are not properly sized for a building or home, for example, the system’s fans will work harder to compensate.
Smart thermostats have helped to improve the efficiency of HVAC equipment by calculating when it is best to start and stop the equipment so that temperatures stay at a desirable level, but they cannot expand the operational efficiency of the equipment to which they are connected. The next step in technology-enabled efficiency, according to a blog post on The Energy Collective website, is to enable thermostats to feed information back to the furnace computer so that the HVAC equipment can run at peak efficiency for as many hours of the day as possible.