Submitted by Arpan Bakshi

The Architectural Technology department at NYCCT provides an elective course on building performance, ARCH 3550: Building Performance Workshop. This course introduces students to whole building energy modeling, the practice of performing a computer simulation which calculates the interactive effects of climate, building envelope, occupancy, mechanical, lighting and plumbing systems.

The Environmental Control & Facilities Management (EC&FM) department at NYCCT houses physical examples of heating, ventilating and air conditioning equipment on campus for the purpose of demonstration and training. These include a variable air volume fan, a heat rejecting cooling tower, a chilled/condenser water pump, an evacuated solar collector and an energy recovery ventilator.

The proposed “Heating, Ventilating & Air Conditioning (HVAC) in Energy Modeling” module will bring together the intellectual and physical resources of the two departments to teach Architectural Technology department students how to research and represent the performance characteristics of the HVAC equipment physically located in the EC&FM department. The module will also teach EC&FM department students how field measurement techniques can transfer to computer simulation technology as a way to perform “what-if” scenarios for various control sequences virtually, to avert risk and identify optimal solution sets.