In the blogs at csemag.com

David Sellers, P.E., senior engineer with the Portland, Ore. office of Facility Dynamics Engineering, and CSE's “A Field Guide for Engineers” blogger, in a new series of postings, shares the results of a retrocommissioning project.

“In the course of beginning a retrocommissioning process on a lab facility, I came across a bit of an anomaly and in the course of exploring it, discovered some useful resources. So, I thought I would share both with you in the next few posts,” he writes.

The facility the facility had undergone a partial renovation of its mechanical systems to replace existing aging machinery and improve efficiency. Much to the owner's dismay, Sellers says, when electric heat was replaced with gas, the site energy consumption in terms of BTUs increased rather than decreased as a result of the effort, as did the utility cost.

“It was this unanticipated, puzzling result that caused the owner to retain my firm to assess and retrocommission the facility and regain control of the site's energy consumption,” explains Sellers. To get a feel for the performance of the facility relative to its peers, Sellers decided to benchmark it using two different publicly available benchmarking tools that include lab facilities in their data base. Sellers offers a complete description of the anomaly—and how commissioning providers solved the puzzle.

Also in the blogs, Editor-in-Chief Michael Ivanovich offers a tongue-in-cheek look at the global competition for arctic resources.