The Department of Defense (DoD) has nearly 300,000 buildings around the world, the majority of which either have modern facility related control systems (FRCS) or intend to upgrade their existing FRCS. These systems deploy many technologies crucial to mission and operational continuity on installations. There are many innovative technologies that regularly come to the market with claims of high energy efficiency or other benefits, but a lack of standardized validation makes deployment or system integration costly.  

The objective of this demonstration is to incorporate developments and lessons learned from Department of Energy (DoE) funded efforts on a framework for de-risking building control technologies into U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory's Control System Test Lab (CSTL) processes and procedures and to build a FRCS technology evaluation framework at CSTL. This would enable the CSTL to test and verify existing and emerging technologies prior to their deployment across the DoD more effectively and efficiently.

The framework that will be developed and demonstrated in this project is targeted toward integration and performance testing of innovative building controls/analytics technologies before their path to adoption across DoD portfolios. Key pieces of this framework already exist in the form of specific control product testbeds and networks within the CSTL. This will be supplemented by developing a generic framework which can plug and play technologies with different target implementation scenarios. The framework will include energy modeling of representative DoD building types, and hardware-in-the-loop runtime simulation/emulation capability for testing of both how a technology can integrate with an existing implementation, and how well it performs in different building scenarios in different weather regions. The framework will also include capabilities for testing standard metadata and data integration requirements and for cyber vulnerability assessments relevant to FRCS technologies. With all of these combined, the framework can provide standardized test scenarios, as well as the flexibility to create custom implementation test scenarios within a risk-contained testbed for checking the readiness level of innovative building control/analytics technologies and their potential energy performance impacts on DoD buildings. This can also help define and fine-tune requirements for technologies before their adoption within the DoD.

Deployment without proper verification is often very costly and high-risk to the DoD and its installations due to the unique DoD operational environment. This project would provide the DoD with an ideal third-party validator catering to their organizational needs. A CSTL armed with the tools developed through these DoE efforts could more easily support research efforts, address risk management concerns, and improve installation preparedness. (Anticipated Project Completion - 2028)