In the years that I’ve worked for my present employer I’ve made some very substantial improvements to the plant and to the building automation system.
I’m going to list some of the things that I’ve changed, but for which I’m not really allowed to take credit for.
When I started here way back in 2005 we had fifteen 42″ variable pitch fans. The problems with these fans were many, but the prime issue with these fans was the sheer amount of millwright level of service that these fans required. These fans also had pneumatic actuators on them that required the services of a trained pneumatic instrumentation mechanic to calibrate not only the positioners on the pneumatic actuators and the E/P transducers that converted the 2-10 VDC signal into a pneumatic signal ranging from 3 PSIG to 15 PSIG.
Up until I started here, no one could service this equipment. The contractor that had the service contract for the automation equipment would service the E/P transducers, but when it came to the actuators there was no one locally that could service these. So no two fans could generate the same amount of pressure or flow. And the pitch mechanisms required a rebuild every six months. The $600.00 dual race radial bearing would be changed because to reuse that bearing risked over $10k in damage to the fan when that bearing would inevitably seize up.
After a change in management that occurred in 2019 I was able to spearhead a project to remove all of the variable pitch rotors and pitch mechanisms and replace the hubs with fixed pitch rotors and variable speed drives.
Was this really my project. Not really. How could it be. I’m not an electrician. I’m not a millwright. I’m not an industrial mechanic. I’m not a certified DDC / BMS tech.
So even though I was the one who ordered the hubs and oversaw their installation, not really my job, eh?
Even though I chose the ABB speed drives and oversaw the programming and implementation of the drives, I’m not really a technician, am I. If I can do it, surely anyone can do it, right?
In 2016 one of our previous chief engineers had to replace a cooling tower for one of the smaller buildings on site. The old tower controls were just simple on/off for the fan. For some reason he ordered a tower with a complete NEMA 4 cabinet with variable speed drive and a by-pass contactor. The contractor replacing the tower finished their job and the chief wanted the electrical department to simply hook the tower up. The mag starters for the old tower fan motor were inside the building about 20 metres away. So, electrical hooked the tower up, and that was it. The tower still wouldn’t run because there were no commands being issued to the VFD.
The building automation company gave a quote of around $15k to set up a controller to monitor the loop temperature, and then start the fan when the temperature went above a setpoint and ramp the speed of the fan up until the temperature started to decreased below the setpoint.
Well, I read the manual for the drive. Learnt that the drive had a built in PID loop, and that the drive’s analog reference input could be configured to receive a signal directly from a 4-20 mA transmitter. The drive would then control the fan speed by itself to maintain the loop temperature at the desired setpoint. No external controller required. Oh, and the only extra cost for this was a single 4-20ma temperature transmitter that cost $150.00. That’s $14,850.00 cheaper than the automation company wanted.
But Bobbie, what you did isn’t anything special. The drive had that feature built in. You can’t take credit for something that the manufacturer designed into the drive. You didn’t design the 4-20 mA transmitter. Anyone could have did what you did. We’ll, the drive has been running just fine for the last 10 years.
There’s a shit ton more like this, and it’s not just this particular employer, it’s been most of my previous employers.
I’m a fucking stupid genius.
Just recently at work the domestic water booster pump was changed out. Plant had to keep costs down to get this job approved. With the facility shutting down between 2027 and 2030 spending $200k on a new triplex booster pump wasn’t really in the plans.
Why don’t we just build a domestic water triplex pump in-house?
Is that even possible?
Well, the ABB ACH drives have “intelligent pump control” built in and using their fieldbus option you can use modbus to network the drives together and they will run to maintain your desired discharge pressure. They will do lead / lag switching based upon demand. They will alternate as the lead pump to equalize the wear of the three pump. And using BACnet, we can monitor the pumps on the building automation system.
Nor do I claim to have written the built in Intelligent Pump Control macro
Nor do I make any claim to having designed and built the two signal converters on the right.
I also spec’d out the 4-20 mA pressure transmitters for the suction and discharge side of the pumps as well as the 4-20 mA to 2-10VDC signal converter.
Bobbie, you didn’t design these pumps, you didn’t build the pumps, you didn’t design these drives, you didn’t program the drives, you didn’t create RS-485, nor did you create BACnet or modbus! Stop trying to take fucking credit for shit that you had absofuckinglutely nothing to do with.
I finally had a chance to start working on modify the VFD controls for the four cooling towers for the main cooling tower loop. These towers were replaced in 2018. New towers, variable speed drives instead of on/off start/stop for the fans.
The problem was the automation company put in automation controllers with proprietary software and proprietary licences. The programs they created for running the towers were so exotic that they never worked as intended and often caused more headaches that they needed to.
I’ve been wanting to fix this issue for the longest time now, and now that I have the BACnet network extended up to the roof I was finally able to strip out all of the automation controls off the drives and put the drives on their internal PID loops. And now the drives have direct control over the tower water isolation valve. The engineers turn a tower on, the drive starts based upon the temperature of the return water and the water valve opens. They now get more data from the drives directly. Under the previous controls the towers were supposed to stage on and off automatically. But this never worked and more often than not the engineers would have to manually open the water valves, then enable a speed drive, and then set a 20 to 100% speed reference for the fan.
Now the engineers just turn the tower on. The tower opens the water valve. The drive automatically by itself modulates the fan speed to supply the required water temperature.
The next step of this project will be to get a simple BACnet controller that will poll the three condenser water pumps on the 4th floor, and the controller will issue start / stop commands via BACnet to turn on the appropriate number of towers.
Jesus H. Christ Bobbie, stop fucking around. For the last time you DID NOT invent controllers, you didn’t invent BACnet, you didn’t invent IP networks, you didn’t invent PID loops inside of speed drives! Is there anything you’re not will to take credit for?
Beeshive 