AI-Optimized HVAC Controls Field Demonstration

Heating, ventilation, air conditioning (“HVAC”) systems in commercial and institutional buildings often run below their potential efficiency because of static controls programming, deferred maintenance, and a lack of continuous commissioning. Artificial Intelligence (“AI”)-driven optimization closes this gap by adjusting HVAC setpoints continuously through software agents that connect to a building's existing controls with no hardware changes and minimal setup. Each agent optimizes a defined system boundary, with the following goal: seek to minimize energy use within operator-set equipment limits and comfort constraints. This project evaluates the air handling unit (“AHU”) optimization agent applied to the AHUs of the “I&I Building” at California State University Dominguez Hills (“CSUDH “). The building is served by a central chilled water plant that already runs under a separate plant-level agent. The two (2) agents do not communicate; the AHU agent treats the plant's chilled water supply temperature as an input and optimizes the air side on its own. The market barrier this project addresses is the lack of independently verified savings data for AI-driven AHU optimization, which currently keeps the technology out of Investor-Owned Utility (“IOU”) incentive programs.The project hypothesis is that the AHU agent will produce measurable, independently verifiable air-side energy savings beyond what the plant-level agent already delivers, and that the study will yield a repeatable verification method to support custom measure development. The target market is commercial and institutional building owners with AHU-based HVAC systems. The project site sits in a disadvantaged community (“DAC”) in Southern California, where energy cost reductions carry direct community benefit. The Technology Priority Maps (“TPM”) research initiatives considered fall under the HVAC commercial installation, operation, and maintenance technology family, specifically scalable continuous commissioning tools and product solutions that lower adoption barriers.