NEEA: Dedicated Outdoor Air System Research and Analysis

Over the last four years, Red Car Analytics has provided technical support for NEEA’s very high efficiency dedicated outdoor air system (VHE DOAS) market transformation program to promote high-efficiency HVAC systems in small and medium nonresidential buildings. In our first project for NEEA, Red Car Analytics provided energy modeling and HVAC system engineering expertise by evaluating the cost-effectiveness of converting an existing commercial building’s HVAC system to different DOAS system configuration options. The project included advanced energy modeling development in OpenStudio (EnergyPlus), batch simulation of the energy models, and the resulting data analytics. The economic analysis and simulation helped inform NEEA for their ongoing development of very high efficiency DOAS systems. Since then, Red Car Analytics has developed additional HVAC system cost-effectiveness analysis reports, webinar trainings on DOAS energy modeling best practices, and analyzed field data to develop calibrated energy models to evaluate real-world performance of DOAS systems in different building types.