Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Control and analytics retrofits in commercial buildings provide owners and operators with tools for improved maintenance and operations, and are an effective strategy for advancing the ambitious carbon reduction objectives mandated by state and federal governments. However, current retrofit processes are labor-intensive, error-prone, and expensive, thereby limiting scalability. There are two primary issues. First, control sequences are: a) typically manually specified in English language using non-standard terminology; b) often not tested prior to installation; and c) more complex when they aim for higher performance (greater efficiency, grid-flexibility). Second, naming conventions used to label the data are often inconsistent, and may vary by practitioner and project. These problems result in significant manual labor and increased cost, lead to malfunctioning operation, and limit scaled deployment of new, high performance control sequences such as needed for heat pump plants with energy storage. This paper presents recent progress towards digitization of these processes, facilitated by two new ASHRAE standards that underwent first public review in 2024. Standard 231P facilitates vendor-neutral, machine-readable representations of control sequences, enabling creation of vendor-agnostic libraries of high performance control sequences that can be translated digitally to building automation systems. Standard 223P facilitates interoperability between controls/analytics and building systems by enabling semi-automatic configuration using semantic models. We first provide a preliminary glimpse into the content of these new standards. Second, we describe their relationships with the established ASHRAE Standard 135 (BACnet communication protocol) and Guideline 36 (high-performance control sequences), and suggest how new automated techniques can be integrated with current human-centric practices. Finally, we discuss how the proposed workflows could impact different industry stakeholders, including owners, designers, control vendors, installers, commissioning agents, and facilities managers. These standards and guidelines enable new workflows that can significantly reduce deployment efforts and costs, and provide a path for scaled deployment of new sequences such as needed for combined chiller and heat pump plants.