How Fault Detection And Diagnostics Can Save Your Building Money?

If there’s a fault occurring in equipment, it will usually go undetected if the smart technology is not installed in the building. At such a point, investment in building automation systems (BAS) isn’t found to be useful. It cannot minimize the overall energy consumption or detect equipment anomalies if not properly maintained or optimized. Then what’s the solution? The application of fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) in BAS. It is one of the powerful tools that eliminate energy waste and reduce operational costs.

According to the 2020 report of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Smart Energy Analytics Campaign, FDD delivers median energy savings of around 9%. In commercial buildings and facilities, it proves to be highly valuable. In the early days, equipment maintenance was only limited to repairing faulty assets and performing regular asset checkups. With time, demand for proactive maintenance gained massive importance. With consistent advancements, automation, real-time data acquisition, and systems like fault detection and diagnostics (FDD), the way equipment maintenance is performed has transformed significantly.

Fault diagnosis and detection are way ahead of BAS!

BAS can send immediate notifications in case of equipment failure at a single point. Fault detection and diagnostics FDD goes beyond that. It does not just detect the discrepancies in equipment but also determines the root cause for the same. The expert FDD platforms automate the process of fault detection with physical systems and processes and diagnose their potential causes.

Fault detection with algorithms overcomes the challenges of analyzing real-time and historical building data. It proactively identifies the issues underlying the building system. At the same time, it allows facility managers to take immediate action before equipment fails to perform or energy is wasted. Facilities that invest in fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) don’t have to incur high energy bills. Also, they can ensure the extended life of the equipment and are able to improve occupants’ comfort.

How does FDD reduce buildings’ energy costs?

The work of the facility managers reduces up to a considerable extent when they ensure FDD in equipment maintenance. It improves the reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety of the equipment. It’s a proactive technology that identifies problems, notifies operators on time, and recommends the required solutions when equipment starts operating outside of expected performance criteria.

Investment in well-designed and well-implemented fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) allows facilities to save a hefty sum of money without putting in much effort. Want to know how? Let’s understand:

1. Identifying the root cause of failure

It’s comparatively easy to detect the anomalies that take place in equipment. But it is a challenge to identify the root cause of the equipment failure. At such a point, fault detection and diagnostics algorithms play a massive role. Since it is at the core of a good fault diagnosis system, it identifies anomalies in the data streams originating from the equipment and determines the root cause behind it.

2. Improve the energy efficiency of the building

Systems like HVAC, lighting, refrigeration and hot water heating are responsible for high energy consumption in buildings. It’s implied that they also contribute massively to the overall operational cost of the building. The energy utilization is even more in faulty systems that usually go unnoticed. If the energy consumption of these systems is optimized, facility managers will definitely see reduced energy costs. Guess what? FDD can make it possible!

Fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) identifies and analyzes the overall building’s energy consumption patterns, detects anomalies, and provides detailed insights about equipment performance to the facility managers. What’s the result? Their goal of achieving optimized energy consumption and reduced energy costs come to reality.

3. Ensures preventive maintenance of the equipment

Gone are the days when facility managers used to follow the rule “if the equipment is not broken, don’t fix it.” It yields no energy efficiency, optimized results, and of course, minimized building costs. This is the time of preventive equipment maintenance that allows facility managers to stay a step ahead of unplanned asset downtime or irregularities. It is not possible without smart analytics.

Achieving the goal of preventive maintenance of the equipment becomes possible with fault detection and analytics (FDD). It detects all the deviations with historic trends and predicts equipment failures even before they take place. It means equipment maintenance is headed by objective data, not arbitrary schedules. In this way, optimal performance becomes easier to maintain. No need to rely on redundant tools and technologies that waste resources and yield no optimal results.

4. Drives automation

The main setback of the building management system (BMS) is it often fails to identify the discrepancies in complex infrastructure setup. It does trigger alarms in equipment failure but doesn’t pinpoint the actual point of failure. As a result, facility managers are left confused. They keep on guessing where the actual problem lies.

Fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) prevents this issue by aggregating real-time and historical data that helps facility managers to identify the actual point of the problem. It also suggests effective solutions for equipment downtime that helps managers to overcome the issue as soon as possible and maintain the building efficiency at the optimum level. With this advanced technology, they can also prevent premature upgrades and equipment replacement that eliminates unnecessary labor and material expenses. It means more savings and a minimum risk of equipment downtime.

Optimizing maintenance and saving building money with FDD

Fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) play a deciding role in optimizing the maintenance regime for equipment in its entire lifecycle. After all, it simplifies building maintenance, makes maintenance visits more result-oriented, and minimizes present and long-term building costs. Looking forward to implementing FDD in your building operations? Connect with Zenatix, one of the emerging and promising IoT companies in India. We realize this motive of yours with our expert and advanced IoT solutions. Next time, you don’t have to keep finding the root cause of equipment failure with our FDD installed in your building!