Using Weather and Schedule based Pattern Matching and Feature based PCA for Whole Building Fault Detection — Part I Development of the Method

Author(s):  
Yimin Chen ◽  
Jin Wen ◽  
L. James Lo

Abstract A whole building fault (WBF) refers to a fault occurring in one component, but may cause impacts on other components or subsystems, or arise impacts of significant energy consumption and thermal comfort. Conventional methods which targeted at the component level fault detection cannot be successfully employed to detect a WBF because of the fault propagation among the closely coupled equipment or subsystems. Therefore, a novel data-driven method named weather and schedule-based pattern matching (WPM) and feature based principal component analysis (FPCA) method for WBF detection is developed. Three processes are established in the WPM-FPCA method to address three main issues in the WBF detection. First, a feature selection process is used to pre-select data measurements which represent a whole building's operation performance under a satisfied status, namely baseline status. Secondly, a WPM process is employed to locate weather and schedule patterns in the historical baseline database, that are similar to that from the current/incoming operation data, and to generate a WPM baseline. Lastly, PCA models are generated for both the WPM baseline data and the current operation data. Statistic thresholds used to differentiate normal and abnormal (faulty) operations are automatically generated in this PCA modeling process. The PCA models and thresholds are used to detect WBF. This paper is the first of a two-part study. Performance evaluation of the developed method is conducted using data collected from a real campus building and will be described in the second part of this paper.

Author(s):  
Yimin Chen ◽  
Jin Wen ◽  
L. James Lo

Abstract In a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system, a whole building fault (WBF) refers to a fault that occurs in one component but may trigger additional faults/abnormalities on different components or subsystems resulting in impacts on the energy consumption or indoor air quality in buildings. At the whole building level, interval data collected from various components/subsystems can be employed to detect WBFs. In the Part I of this study, a novel data-driven method which includes weather and schedule-based Pattern Matching (WPM) procedure and a feature based principal component analysis PCA (FPCA) procedure was developed to detect the WBF. This article is the second of a two-part study of the development of the whole building fault detection method. In the Part II of the study (this paper), various WBFs were designed and imposed in the HVAC system of a campus building. Data from both imposed fault and naturally-occurred faults were collected through the Building Automation System to evaluate the developed fault detection method. Evaluation results show that the developed WPM-FPCA method reaches a high detection rate and a low false alarm rate.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yimin Chen ◽  
Jin Wen

Faults, i.e., malfunctioned sensors, components, control, and systems, in a building have significantly adverse impacts on the building’s energy consumption and indoor environment. To date, extensive research has been conducted on the development of component level fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) for building systems, especially the Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system. However, for faults that have multi-system impacts, component level FDD tools may encounter high false alarm rate due to the fact that HVAC subsystems are often tightly coupled together. Hence, the detection and diagnosis of whole building faults is the focus of this study. Here, a whole building fault refers to a fault that occurs in one subsystem but triggers abnormalities in other subsystems and have significant adverse whole building energy impact. The wide adoption of building automation systems (BAS) and the development of machine learning techniques make it possible and cost-efficient to detect and diagnose whole building faults using data-driven methods. In this study, a whole building FDD strategy which adopts weather and schedule information based pattern matching (WPM) method and feature based Principal Component Analysis (FPCA) for fault detection, as well as Bayesian Networks (BNs) based method for fault diagnosis is developed. Fault tests are implemented in a real campus building. The collected data are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed whole building FDD strategies.


TAPPI Journal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41
Author(s):  
YVON THARRAULT ◽  
MOULOUD AMAZOUZ

Recovery boilers play a key role in chemical pulp mills. Early detection of defects, such as water leaks, in a recovery boiler is critical to the prevention of explosions, which can occur when water reaches the molten smelt bed of the boiler. Early detection is difficult to achieve because of the complexity and the multitude of recovery boiler operating parameters. Multiple faults can occur in multiple components of the boiler simultaneously, and an efficient and robust fault isolation method is needed. In this paper, we present a new fault detection and isolation scheme for multiple faults. The proposed approach is based on principal component analysis (PCA), a popular fault detection technique. For fault detection, the Mahalanobis distance with an exponentially weighted moving average filter to reduce the false alarm rate is used. This filter is used to adapt the sensitivity of the fault detection scheme versus false alarm rate. For fault isolation, the reconstruction-based contribution is used. To avoid a combinatorial excess of faulty scenarios related to multiple faults, an iterative approach is used. This new method was validated using real data from a pulp and paper mill in Canada. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively detect sensor faults and water leakage.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (14) ◽  
pp. 6370
Author(s):  
Elena Quatrini ◽  
Francesco Costantino ◽  
David Mba ◽  
Xiaochuan Li ◽  
Tat-Hean Gan

The water purification process is becoming increasingly important to ensure the continuity and quality of subsequent production processes, and it is particularly relevant in pharmaceutical contexts. However, in this context, the difficulties arising during the monitoring process are manifold. On the one hand, the monitoring process reveals various discontinuities due to different characteristics of the input water. On the other hand, the monitoring process is discontinuous and random itself, thus not guaranteeing continuity of the parameters and hindering a straightforward analysis. Consequently, further research on water purification processes is paramount to identify the most suitable techniques able to guarantee good performance. Against this background, this paper proposes an application of kernel principal component analysis for fault detection in a process with the above-mentioned characteristics. Based on the temporal variability of the process, the paper suggests the use of past and future matrices as input for fault detection as an alternative to the original dataset. In this manner, the temporal correlation between process parameters and machine health is accounted for. The proposed approach confirms the possibility of obtaining very good monitoring results in the analyzed context.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 3169
Author(s):  
Sara Månsson ◽  
Marcus Thern ◽  
Per-Olof Johansson Kallioniemi ◽  
Kerstin Sernhed

Faults in district heating (DH) customer installations cause high return temperatures, which have a negative impact on both current and future district heating systems. Thus, there is a need to detect and correct these faults soon after they occur to minimize their impact on the system. This paper, therefore, suggests a fault handling process for the detection and elimination of faults in DH customer installations. The fault handling process is based on customer data analysis since many faults manifest in customer data. The fault handling process was based on an analysis of the results from the previous fault handling studies, as well as conducting a workshop with experts from the DH industry. During the workshop, different organizational and technical challenges related to fault handling were discussed. The results include a presentation of how the utilities are currently working with fault handling. The results also present an analysis of different organizational aspects that would have to be improved to succeed in fault handling. The paper also includes a suggestion for how a fault handling process based on fault detection using data analysis may be designed. This process may be implemented by utilities in both current and future DH systems that interested in working more actively with faults in their customer installations.


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