Initiatives > Data Clearing House > DCH8
DCH8: Exergenics Chiller Staging App
About the project
This project aims to integrate the Exergenics exOptima central HVAC plant optimisation solution with the Data Clearing House and use it to demonstrate energy savings and renewable energy demand profile matching, in at least one CSIRO building.
This will help validate the efficacy of the Data Clearing House as a tool for Exergenics to rapidly onboard buildings. It will also provide a rigorous case-study of the exOptima software that can be used to develop the market for Exergenics services.
| Project title | DCH8 – Exergenics Chiller Staging App |
| Project number | DCH8 |
| Project location | Melbourne |
| Lead partner | Exergenics |
| Project partners | CSIRO, Exergenics |
| Project participants | CSIRO |
| Start date | 09/2021 |
| End date | 05/2022 |
| ARENA/i-Hub funding | $12,400 |
| Total project cost | $37,060 |
Need
Black box solutions for optimising building cooling are costly to set up and operate, require new hardware and technicians, lack transparency over what’s happening in the system, and cannot project potential energy savings before implementation based on historical data.
The i-Hub Data Clearing House provides access to the necessary building HVAC data, and to weather and solar energy data.
This project is required to improve exOptima functionality by accounting for renewable energy self-consumption in the algorithms, validating the efficacy of the exOptima technology in more diversified scenarios, and accelerating commercialisation by integration with the i-Hub Data Clearing House.
Action
There are five key stages in the project:
- Train building Facility Management staff to use the PlantScore results.
- Adapt exOptima to perform plant optimisation utilising data through the DCH
- Deploy exOptima in case study building
- Develop widgets (Apps) in the Data Clearing House that display different visualisations from the exOptima results
- Benchmark impact using the DCH M&V App
Outcome
The project helps the i-Hub Data Clearing House Activity demonstrate successful industry uptake by supporting delivery of Apps. In particular it will contribute to one of i-Hubs main KPIs by contributing one new Application (exOptima) on the i-Hub Data Clearing House platform.
In addition, this project should demonstrate energy savings from the exOptima App in at least one CSIRO building.
Additional impact
By enhancing the scalability of the exOptima solution, the developments of this project will increase the accessibility to essential energy saving technology to a large number of buildings in Australia and around the world, putting a dent in the significant cost of HVAC on our environment.
Project reports
Evaluation Framework
All sub-projects within i-Hub are evaluated as part of the ongoing i-Hub project management process. Evaluation is completed by the project manager and reviewed by the Activity Leaders Group and i-Hub Steering Committee.