ASHRAE Journal:
ASHRAE Journal presents.
Kelly Barraza:
Welcome to ASHRAE Journal podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Barraza, managing editor. This episode will be on fans and drives, and with us today are Michael Ivanovich, Senior Director of Global Affairs for Air Movement and Control Association International, known widely as AMCA, and Christian Taber, Principal Engineer Codes and Standards of Big Ass Fans. And they're going to talk about fans from the perspectives of codes, regulations, market issues, and emerging applications.
But first, some introduction. Michael Ivanovich has been a director at AMCA International since 2011, joining the association to represent AMCA members in North American fan-efficiency regulations and to coordinate advocacy in AMCA's, Asia and Middle East regions. He's been a full member of ASHRAE since 1999 and his background includes being a research scientist in the fields of indoor air quality and energy efficiency and as a chief editor in trade media. Michael is calling in from his home in Colorado, Springs, where he and his wife Dr. Amy Smith, spent a lot of time hiking, gardening, and snowshoeing. Hi Michael.
Michael Ivanovich:
Hello everybody. Thanks a lot for having me here today. It's really a pleasure to be talking to the ASHRAE audience.
Kelly Barraza:
As for Christian, he also participates in the development of building codes, standards, and regulations. Frequently collaborating with AMCA, the International Code Council, ASHRAE, and the US Department of Energy. He's chair of AMCA's North America Advocacy Committee for Fans, vice-chair of the AMCA Air Movement Division, and a member of AMCA's board of directors. He's an ASHRAE distinguished lecturer and enjoys outdoor activities with his wife and twin daughters. Hi, Christian.
Christian Taber:
Good morning. Glad to be here.
Kelly Barraza:
All right, so we'll get right to it on fans and drives. Michael, for those who are new to AMCA, how about a few words about AMCA International? What do they do?
Michael Ivanovich:
Oh, thank you, Kelly. Well, AMCA is a not-for-profit trade association for manufacturers of fans, dampers, louvers, and other air system products. We've been around for more than a hundred years, starting with 6 US companies and growing to more than 400 companies worldwide. With more than half of our members being outside the North America. AMCA develops ANSI-accredited standards, one of which ASHRAE co-publishes as ASHRAE Standard 51 for testing fans. We have actually a long-standing and wonderful relationship with ASHRAE. We publish AMCA inmotion as an annual supplement to the ASHRAE Journal. We just started a quarterly e-newsletter with the same title and we have an MOU with ASHRAE to coordinate global activities, which is we're looking forward to renewing that this year. Towards today's podcast, I'd like to remind listeners that the 2023 issue of AMCA inmotion has articles by Christian and I on fan regulations. So if some of you want to delve into the details of what we covered today, please check them out.
Kelly Barraza:
Yes, that's the one that has Uncle Sam on the road. I think we had one last year with Uncle Sam on the cover. We also facilitate the printing of that of AMCA, so we get it on our stands at ASHRAE HQ. I think it's really cool.
Christian, let's start this conversation with you. What's up with ceiling fans these days?
Christian Taber:
It's a busy, busy time in the ceiling fan world. So the focus for me in this podcast is really large diameter ceiling fans, which are also known as HVLS fans-high volume, low speed. Those are ceiling fans that are larger than seven feet in diameter, typically use smaller horsepower motors go up to 24 feet in diameter. I'll also be talking about circulating fans, which aren't ceiling fans. Those fans are electrical input power greater than 125 watts and those are being covered by newly written DOE regulation. So federal regulations right now are the big news. We have a uniform test procedure and minimum efficiencies for LDCFs for the bigger ceiling fans, and a test procedure and some pending energy regulations coming for air circulating fans. So right now in the world of air circulation, just a lot of revisions to federal regulations and a lot of new federal regulations coming down the pipe.
Kelly Barraza:
So, Christian, are any these regulations considered mandatory for ASHRAE and AMCA members?
Christian Taber:
Yeah, well, it wouldn't really be for ASHRAE members per se, but it's important for ASHRAE members to be aware the federal regulations are mandatory. So for all of the covered products you have to test using the mandatory federal test procedure and then you have to exceed the federal minimum efficiencies and then the manufacturer has to register those products with the US DOE's certification compliance database. So as a manufacturer, you have to test, you have to exceed minimums, and then you have to certify that you have done all those things before you're offering your products for sale. And what this provides to the designer is hopefully reliable, consistent performance data that allows to compare one fan to another.
Michael Ivanovich:
Kelly, can I add onto a little bit? So what Christian just mentioned about mandatory with respect to federal regulations applies to not only the ceiling fans and air circulating fans that he's going to be talking about, but also the commercial and industrial fans and blowers that I'll be talking about with respect to LDC regulations. Those regulations do apply to fans that are sold in the purview of the US Department of Energy, which includes all US states, US territories, and by an extension between an MOU, so to speak, between US and Canada. It also applies to products under the scope of those regulations that are sold in Canada as well. And this is no matter where those products are manufactured, so any of those products are manufactured outside the US territories in Canada and states if they're imported into the United States, they're still covered by those regulations.
Kelly Barraza:
Well, that's good. Probably much better for these companies who need to actually order in these products, make sure they're up to snuff, so to speak, even if they're being imported. Right?
Michael Ivanovich:
You bet.
Kelly Barraza:
All right. Mike, do you want to talk a little bit about the commercial and industrial fans, things that aren't ceiling fans?
Michael Ivanovich:
Sure. Well, fans have been around for over a thousand years, but they've been under efficiency scrutiny for about the last 20 or so years. It started out with ASHRAE 90.1 in United States looking at setting a minimum efficiency requirement for fans because there wasn't a particular requirement for fans per se, there was the fan power limit section of 90.1, but there was no specific requirement for a fan to have a minimum efficiency. So ASHRAE started this off in the United States. And so some of the key points about that is that when ASHRAE 90.1 did create a fan requirement, it was in the 2013 edition using a metric called Fan Efficiency Grade or FEG and FEG was tied to an AMCA standard, which defined how to calculate Fan Efficiency Grade. And while the 90.1 FEG addendum was under development, the US Department of Energy started an appliance and equipment standard rulemaking for commercial industrial fans.
So fans hadn't been regulated before, but now they're being regulated in two parallel paths. One of them was with model energy codes like ASHRAE 90.1, and now we have this federal regulation starting around the same time and that becomes significant down the road. So AMCA and other stakeholders fought that DOE when they started their regulation would use the FEG metric for its regulation, but that didn't happen. Ultimately, long story short, DOE accepted a different metric as part of a public negotiation that ended in 2015 when this new metric is called the Fan Energy Index or FEI. And that FEI metric was solidified in an AMCA standard in 2018. ASHRAE 90.1 updated to FEI in its 2019 edition, as well as the International Energy Conservation Code and California Title 24 Commercial Energy Code. They use FEI as well, and as state energy codes continue to evolve through the regular code cycles through transitioning from FEG to FEI.
Meanwhile, when the DOE regulation was underway, in 2017 by an executive order of a new presidential administration, they postponed the development of new federal DOE regulations. And so the fan rulemaking was put on a shelf. California Energy Commission saw that as an opportunity to pick up where DOE left off, so to speak, on the fan regulation. And they started their own Title 20 Appliance Regulation for Fans, which was finalized in 2022 and set to take effect in April 29 of this year. Now there was a postponement of the deadline, et cetera, et cetera. So all this is happening. Meanwhile, there's a new presidential administration after the prior one and they kick started the fan regulation again. So now DOE is in the final stages of the fan regulation that has started in 2011. So since it restarted the federal test procedure was published in May 2023, California Energy Commission through preemption is now adopting the DOE test standard as part of its Title 20 regulation, which is why they had to postpone the deadline.
And now the DOE has published a draft efficiency standard early this year and they're now evaluating the public comments to that. And the final rule is expected this year when that final rule is published, it won't take effect for under about five years. So 2029 is about the time when a federal regulation for commercial and industrial fans and blowers will take effect, and that will also include air circulating fans as Christian mentioned. So, long story short, ASHRAE started the first US fan efficiency requirement. DOE picked it up, put on a shelf for a while and then California picked it up and now California and DOE have parallel regulations on commercial industrial fans and blowers.
Kelly Barraza:
I will say this is very cool about the California news because right now it's April 10th when we're recording this podcast. By the time it's produced in early May online for our listeners that regulation for California will be in effect. Michael, do you have anything else to add about fan regulation?
Michael Ivanovich:
Yes, I do. Again, when you talk about regulations, there's so much detail and in a podcast, how much can you really cover without making people turn the channel? But first of all, as I mentioned in California, they're improving their final changes today takes effect April 29th, but members are already beginning to file compliance data in the CEC database. Fans manufactured on or after April 29th this year must be in the California database when offered for sale in California. Fans that are in scope are most types of commercial and industrial fans such as axial, centrifugal and radial fans between one horsepower and 150 horsepower air power. And there are exceptions such as ceiling fans and other types of circulating fans that we've talked about, plus jet fans, air curtains and safety fans. Fans that are sold embedded in packaged equipment are also exempt as well as fans sold exclusively as replacement embedded fans.
So, for example, fans sold in packaged air conditioning equipment, boilers and air handling units are exempt from the California regulation. Fans that are in scope have to have a minimum FEI greater than or equal to 1.00. They also have to have a permanent label with criteria. The parameters on that label are specified in the regulation. There are a lot of nuances to this. So listeners are advised to review the specific regulatory language. There's a great online resource to support Title 20 education and compliance. It's called Energy Code Ace, and their website address is www.energycodeace, all one word, .com. So energycodeace.com. Energy Code Ace also covers Title 24. So if you're involved in commercial energy code for California, that's Title 24, Energy Code Ace has resources for that as well. One of the nice things about the Title 20 regulation is that it's consistent with ASHRAE and other model and state energy codes by sending the minimum FEI at 1.00 and having that apply to all fans that are in scope.
Meanwhile, back in DOE land, the draft regulatory energy standard for fans severely departed from everything that exists today by varying FEI levels with fan category. So centrifugal fans have a different FEI requirement than radial fans and axial fans. And in all, DOE defines nine different fan categories and the FEI requirements will be set individually to each. Now I won't comment much more on the draft standard, but I will say that in addition to varying the FEI levels, the proposed levels, requirements, are higher than expected with some as high as 1.48, which is almost 50% higher than the current energy codes and California Title 20. So part of our comments address that situation and we'll see what DOE does. But I just wanted to bring it to your attention that there are some big departures from how DOE intends to regulate fans with an energy standards compared to California and the model and state energy codes.
Christian Taber:
And Michael, to add to that, I would say one of the really important things with any of these regulatory processes, whether it's CEC or DOE, is if your company's materially involved or you feel that you've got a special expertise on that topic, the CEC and DOE are very much looking for comments, input, data, they're looking for help. So I'll say that both of our organizations, ASHRAE as well, all have been fairly involved in all of these rulemaking processes and bringing experts to the table to sit down with DOE and their consultants has really transformed at least so far all of the regulations that we've worked with and made them a lot better. So to the listeners, I would highly recommend that if you have fan expertise or you have a concern on these regulations or the impacts on your products, get involved with the regulatory or the government affairs arm of whatever organization you work with and make the effort to make the regulations better.
DOE and CEC can only make decisions on the data they have and failure to provide good inputs and good data and background and application data to those regulatory body means that the rules will be less good. And I'll say that in my personal experience, that they're very open to hearing your opinion and trying to incorporate that into the end regulations. So just my pitch to get involved and to work with organizations like these and make sure that your voice is heard.
Michael Ivanovich:
Both California and DOE have been extremely collaborative and these fan rulemakings. So, over the years, not only DOE but also stakeholders that represent energy efficiency organizations, other manufacturers, I wouldn't say we're all kumbaya all the time, but advocacy can be a conflict oriented endeavor, but in many senses, from my experience, has been a very collaborative experience altogether.
Kelly Barraza:
Very neat. So, Christian, does the CEC and DOE include other types of fans like air circulating fans?
Christian Taber:
So the CEC did not include regulations for air circulating fans. So that portion of the regulations, those products are exempt. But DOE at a last minute, at least last minute, in the more than decade long process of regulating fans, added air circulating fans into the fans and blowers regulations, that addition brought in a new product class which was seeing issues similar to the large diameter ceiling fan mark back in the early turn of the century. So the air circulating fan market saw inconsistent use of test procedures, different companies testing different ways. Performance data was then not comparable from one to another, and it led to decision making that was difficult for consumers and for design engineers using those products because you never knew exactly how the data was determined and if it was reliable. So with DOE's new mandatory test procedure, you'll now be able to compare product A to product B pretty easily and have a good idea that those numbers are actually fairly reliable and consistent.
So there was also a little bit of market confusion. Some ceiling fans were federally regulated and air circulating fans weren't. There were a lot of questions around air circulating fans that could be mounted to the ceiling, is that a ceiling fan? Because it's a fan on the ceiling. And so DOE had to change their definitions for both ceiling fans and air circulating fans to clarify which was which. So now you see basically two separate regulations, one in the fans and blowers rulemaking for air circulating fans, and then the separate fairly finalized regulation for large diameter ceiling fans. So one of the big differences, so both products are tested to AMCA or both product classes are tested to AMCA Standard 230.
For large diameter ceiling fans, the ceiling fan energy index, CFEI is the metric of choice, and for air circulating fans, it's an efficacy which is in CFM per watt. So you have two different performance metrics, both will have federal minimum efficiencies to be sold in the US. So it's an interesting time right now in the market. You're starting to see some transformation to the DUE test procedure, which becomes mandatory for air circulating fans here in a little bit. And then you also are starting to see what the energy conservation standard are, those minimum efficiencies will look like. So a lot of interesting things going on in their circulating fans.
Kelly Barraza:
You have anything to say, Michael?
Michael Ivanovich:
Yeah, one of those interesting things is DOE enforcement on large diameter ceiling fans and ceiling fans in general, right?
Christian Taber:
Yeah. So there's been an interesting change there. Historically, the large diameter ceiling fan regulations while they were in place during the previous presidential administration, those regulations weren't really enforced. So it's kind of on the manufacturer to decide if they wanted to comply or not. There was nobody really policing that activity. Recently, in the last year or so, we've started to see some regulatory activity. So we've seen DOE fining companies for not properly registering their products in the United States. Those fines have ranged from twenty-thousand to a hundred-thousand dollars and we believe that there are more pending. We're also starting to see DOE look at actual performance data so you may see fines for companies providing products to the market that are not meeting those federal minimum efficiencies. Some very interesting times right now. I'm sure there's a lot of lawyers who are very interested in what's going on, seeing DOE enforcement moving forward and starting to bring some of those violations to the front.
Michael Ivanovich:
A couple of points about that is when I introduced AMCA, I didn't mention that we have a global network of testing laboratories and I believe we're the only US laboratory capable of testing large diameter ceiling fans. So I can tell you that since DOE started enforcing the ceiling fan regulation, we've been getting more requests to do testing at our laboratory and we also certify product ratings and we're seeing more requests to join the AMCA certified ratings program for testing and rating those products as well. So the DOE enforcement has pushed some awareness of AMCA and our capabilities to the market.
Christian Taber:
Right. From a designer standpoint, I think it's important to note that because of the federal test procedure going into place and being enforced, it's highly likely that you're going to see some of the published manufacturer's performance data change. So if you're a designer and you've got schedules that you've not looked at, the specifications that you've not looked at in a little while, it might be time to go through and update those to make sure that your airflow, your power, your performance data is based on the current published numbers. The products aren't really changing for the most part, you're just seeing a change in what was published as the overall performance of the product. So it'd be a good time to go back and revisit your schedules and your specs and make sure that everything's up-to-date based on the current test procedures.
Michael Ivanovich:
The other thing too about these products, large diameter ceiling fans, is they have an interesting history in terms of the metric, the ceiling fan energy index. Christian, why don't you talk a little bit about the metric and how it came to be?
Christian Taber:
Sure. DOE originally had regulated ceiling fans based off of CFM per watt, which is an efficacy, not an efficiency. And due to the fan laws, it allowed for what we'll call "gaming." So a fan manufacturer could slow down their products and provide less utility, less airflow, but because the relationship between power and airflow is roughly cubic, when you slow the fan down it's efficacy, it's CFM per watt goes up. So it allowed less efficient products to remain on the marketplace by simply lowering their utility. The CFEI metric was created as an index as a way to evaluate the efficiency of a product via that CFEI metric. So it looks at how much airflow the fan creates its diameter and calculates out essentially how much work, how much output air power is being generated. Then compares that to a minimally efficient fan as defined at AMCA 214, and then what you end up with the overall rating.
A CFEI rating of 1.00 means that the fan you're looking at is equally as efficient as a baseline fan. If it's 1.1, then it's 10% more efficient. If it's 0.9, it's 10% less efficient. So it gives you an overall rating for the product based off of how much work it's actually doing and it's also a lot harder to game. So the change to the CFEI metric, which came a federal law, allows for products to stay on the market. CFM penalized high utility products. So if you moved a lot of air for a given diameter, you would basically not pass and it rewarded low utility products where it was very easy to make a low airflow for a given diameter fan to pass. So CFEI allows basically fans of all utilities to remain on the market, but it requires, regardless of how much air you use, to use individual components that are efficient and create an overall efficient system.
Michael Ivanovich:
And part of the fun thing about CFEI in terms of its history was DOE had already finalized the energy standard and test procedure for large standard ceiling fans around the CFM per watt metric. It was an average CFM per watt at different speeds, and because the regulation was final, it took legislative action to change the metric from CFM per watt to CFEI. So I think one of the last bills that President Trump signed on his way out was the omnibus spending bill and the ceiling fan improvement act-
Christian Taber:
Yeah. It was December 27th 2020.
Michael Ivanovich:
So in 2020, the omnibus bill was what was able to change the large ceiling fan regulatory metric from average CFM per watt to CFEI. So, that's how it came to be.
Kelly Barraza:
I have one quick question I get out of the legislative and metric leads, and just generally, are air circulating fans an efficient way to cool occupants?
Christian Taber:
So I guess I'll take that one, Michael. So air circulating fans, generally speaking, so the fundamental theory behind them is you have air, you move that air across the human body, it's going to pull some heat off. If the air is colder than the body, it's sensible heat. If the air is relatively dry, it'll pull off additional moisture and that creates cooling of the body. Some people call it a cooling effect, but it's heat transfer. You're pulling heat off the body more rapidly than still air would be. So it's a very efficient means of increasing heat transfer. You can provide five, 10 degrees of cooling to an occupant for as little as a hundred watts or less depending.
So from an overall efficiency standpoint, yes, especially in buildings that are difficult to air condition. So if you look at a typical warehouse, so maybe a cross-stock application where you've got large openings on both sides of the building and huge amounts of air infiltration, a lot of those buildings just aren't practical to air condition because of the envelope losses, the infiltration losses, etc. So when you look at air circulating fans and those types of applications, the warehousing industrial distribution center type world, it's really the only feasible means of providing comfort to those workers.
Michael Ivanovich:
Right. And to that point, one of the perils of an efficiency regulations, if you set the regulations too stringent and that increases the costs of those products to a certain point where owners might say, well, instead of using circulating fans, we'll move to a compressor-based refrigeration air conditioning technology.
Christian, did you do some analysis on that? When we were looking at the draft energy standard for circulating fans?
Christian Taber:
Yeah, we looked at some basic just warehousing type applications and air circulating fans were about 20 times more efficient for providing cooling for those occupants, and those were at fairly low infiltration rates. So it's not applicable in every application, but if you can use air movement to provide the first five or 10 degrees of cooling and maybe supplement with air conditioning in really hot humid climates, it does provide a good opportunity for a low energy intensive thermal comfort solution. And a lot of that's based around ASHRAE Standard 55. When you look at how you're going to calculate cooling effect, how you're going to determine how much airspeed you need across the body, ASHRAE Standard 55 is really the place to do that. CBE thermal comfort tool, which is the ASHRAE tool of choice for doing comfort calculations, provides a means for designers to go in, put in their design scenario and look at what their airspeed requirements are to achieve reasonable levels of thermal comfort or to reduce heat stress for occupants in the building.
Kelly Barraza:
Here's the question, is thermal comfort something that you design heavily around when you write about fans for the government, for regulations and things like that?
Christian Taber:
I would say ultimately it's the end use of the product. So there are a lot of different uses for air circulating fans. They can end up in some process equipment, you think like an electric transformer that's going to have an air circulating fan on it potentially to increase the greater heat loss for that transformer. But most of the products are used for comfort cooling and that's going to be man or beast. You see a lot of agricultural applications of elevated airspeed because those buildings maybe aren't super well insulated, there's maybe not a huge amount of power available to them. So it's just a way of providing efficient comfort. And the key thing is with the regulations, and this was a lot of the discussions that were had with the Department of Energy were around utility and we wanted to make sure that whatever the regulation was, it created more efficient products or pushed the industry towards more efficient products, but it also maintained all of the available utilities.
So for people, you look at Standard 55 and it says for most commercial applications, you're going to be around one and a half to maybe two miles an hour. When you get into industrial applications, the desired cooling effects are going to be more in the two to maybe five mile per hour breeze range. But when you start looking at ag applications, four or five miles an hour is really where you start, especially when you look at cows, which are much more massive, have thicker hides, and the heat transfer requirements for them are much larger. So it's important when a product's regulated that becomes more efficient, but it's also important to make sure that you maintain all of the available utilities so that designers and practitioners continue to apply those products the way they have for the last 50 or a hundred years.
Michael Ivanovich:
And just to add onto that a little bit, federal and state product regulations in general, product and equipment, appliance regulations, they impact products at the point of manufacture. And so the definitions have to be very precise. Is it defining what a product is and what is a centrifugal fan? What is an axial fan? So all those definitions are meant to guide the Department of Energy to regulate a product a certain way at the point of manufacture. It's up to energy codes like 90.1 and the comfort standards and things of that nature to guide engineers for designing systems. And whenever they specify products to manifest those systems in practice, those products have to meet the equipment and appliance standards.
Kelly Barraza:
Speaking of DOE, Michael, you mentioned that the DOE energy standard won't take effect until 2029. Do you have anything more to say about that?
Michael Ivanovich:
Sure. I think part of that question there is that what happens to California, which takes effect on April 29th between that time and when DOE energy standard takes effect five years after the final rule is published. And the answer is that the California energy standard will remain in effect during the grace period for the DOE energy standard. And when the DOE energy standard takes effect, California will update their Title 20 language to parallel DOE's because DOE will preempt the California regulation.
Kelly Barraza:
Michael, are there any differences between the DOE and CEC that listeners might need to know?
Michael Ivanovich:
Well, good question. Real good question, Kelly. Thank you. Scope differences, Christian mentioned California does not cover air circulating fans. Also, because the DOE test standard is the first level of scope filtering, so to speak, in terms of size of fans that are covered, the range of fans that are covered by both regulations, both pertaining to the same test procedure now, one horsepower, electrical input power on the small side and 150 air power on the larger side, the exemptions are now the same. Where they begin to diverge in scope is, as mentioned, air circulating fans of course, but also embedded fans. And embedded fans technically are fans that are sold inside packaged equipment are equipment that has a purpose other than air movement. So packaged air conditioning systems, boiler systems, air handling units, California exempts embedded fans and fans that are exclusively sold as replacement fans for embedded fans.
DOE however does not, they have a very nuanced way of handling embedded fans. It's very complex. The best thing I could do is point people to AHRI, Air Conditioning, Heating Refrigeration Institute, which has the expertise around the concept of embedded fans for HVAC equipment or ASHRAE equipment. But it's very nuanced and it's too much to cover in a podcast. But embedded fans are covered by the DOE regulation with a lot of exemptions, but with a lot of inclusions as well. And if there's an industrial application for embedded fans such as paint booths, dust collectors and things of that nature, those applications are exempt from California and manufacturers might want to check with California if they have specific questions around that. It could be not quite clear. But within DOE, those applications are not exempt. Those are the big differences right there.
Kelly Barraza:
Things like California's leading the way, they're walking ahead on this, so.
Michael Ivanovich:
They're known for that.
Kelly Barraza:
We'll keep the eye on that whenever we're looking for news for the journal, we're always like, what's California up to? All right. So, Christian, back to you. So ceiling fans have been talked about in terms of air treatment, not just circulation the biggest, a little cliche now, but COVID being the top thing in the past few years that really impacted circulation and air, and I think even some fan products came out with integrated UV lights. Just speaking more generally, what can you say about the role of ceiling fans when it comes to human health?
Christian Taber:
Well, this really came up and started to come to the forefront during the start of the COVID pandemic. And we saw a lot of additional guidance that said things like turn fans off, which in some applications may be a good idea and other applications may be a really bad idea. So we decided to take a scientific approach. We approached a number of different PhDs, MDs and created an international science team with AMCA leading the charge. And that included Dr. Bill Bahnfleth, who was the chair of the ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force and is the chair of ASHRAE Standard 241. There was a lot of modeling done by Dr. Leon Wang's team at Concordia University in Montreal. And the research was focused on distribution centers during COVID. A lot of us were doing our shopping online and relying on those online retailers to deliver our necessary goods to us.
So that was the focus to try to keep that portion of the supply chain operating. So we were looking at large buildings with relatively low occupancies and relatively high infiltration rates. And the results of those simulations showed that the air distribution created by ceiling fans, specifically HVLS fans, diluted concentrations, and that running the fans as fast as possible provided the best possible scenario for dilution. So all that modeling was done around PNL model for warehouses that's used for like ASHRAE 90.1 to determine whether or not that's the next version of the standard saves a certain amount of energy or not. Those baseline buildings were the basis of the study and the warehouse one was, and that was turned into a peer-reviewed article that was published large by a group of scientists reviewed it, so that's available at amca.org/ldcf. So if you want to take a look at that paper, very interesting.
Obviously it was very specific to the distribution side of the world of those large warehouses and distribution centers, but a very critical part for us during COVID. There were also a long-standing history of air circulating fans being used with UVG. There's also a long history of air circulating fans, ceiling fans specifically being used with a UVGI upper room specifically where you've got a ceiling fan doing air distribution around the space. And then at the, you've got UVC lights providing air disinfection. ASHRAE is working on a guideline currently on how to design those systems and implement them. Hopefully that will publish here in the somewhat near future. So if we do have another pandemic, we'll have another effective and energy efficient means of trying to increase the safety of occupied buildings.
Kelly Barraza:
Do you have anything to say about fans when it comes to heat? Because we talk about COVID, that's a big topic, and just cooties generally. Now that we've gone through COVID in a pandemic, people are always super cognizant of infectious aerosols and controlling them within buildings. But another thing I saw that everyone talks about is heat and things are heating up. There's a lot of heat waves. You have anything to say about fans when it comes to heat stress and alleviating that?
Christian Taber:
Yeah, that was one of our big concerns with some of the COVID guidance. So when you think about a large warehouse, say in, let's go with Houston, Texas, and Miami, Florida. So you've got a hot humid environment, you've got workers that are doing fairly large laborious tasks, so high metabolic rates, and in a pandemic, if the guidance blindly states to turn off all air circulating devices, you now are stuck with a choice. So if you're worried about the potential impact of the fans on distribution of airborne particles, you've got a recommendation from an entity that says to turn the fans off. At the same time, you have workers who are under heat stress, which is a much more instantaneous issue. And so now as a building operator, you've got one document that says shut them off, and you've got another document that says turn them on because people are falling over from heat stress.
So we wanted to make sure that with the research that we did with the ASHRAE group for COVID, that we provided good guidance on how to run the fans and then also took into account the fact that well, heat stress is a real thing and it's there every day all summer long in these applications. So we wanted to make sure that that air movement to mitigate heat stress was also available. So actually in the first draft of 241, it included some requirements for air circulation that were a little bit unclear, and the committee did a really nice job of clearing that up. So it makes it allowable for fans to be run in those types of environments. So some good coordination and some good alignment. And for those of you who are designing in those kinds of applications where you've got high temperature, high humidity, humidity, the Center for the Built Environment's thermal comfort tool also has a heat stress section and it'll allow you to put in your design conditions and see at which point air movement becomes no longer beneficial.
So at some point with a high enough humidity level and a higher enough dry bulb temperature, you turn an application from cooling in the convection heating, which can be dangerous. So that CBE tool provides you some good guidance on is this a scenario, you've got a hot humid climate, you've got a lot of internal heat gains, you don't have great ventilation. It'll provide you a means to evaluate, is this something where air movement is going to be beneficial or do I have to worry about something doing about that?
Kelly Barraza:
That's really cool, Christian. For the record, for any listeners who are interested in some of the articles and literature and tools referenced in this episode, we will have that linked on the landing page for this podcast when it's published. So if you're curious about anything mentioned here, it should be on that landing page. One more question about large diameter ceiling fans, Christian, and that's about sustainability and indoor agriculture.
Christian Taber:
We've been seeing a lot of designs where we're starting to see air movement incorporated directly into the HVAC system. So a lot of times what we've historically seen is you have an HVAC system of some sort, maybe just the heating and ventilation portion, and then you have some ceiling fans and the things operate independently. And we've seen a lot more designs with the use of elevated airspeed from air circulating fans or from large diameter ceiling fans as a part of the HVAC system. And I think the ASHRAE headquarters is a good example of that. You have fans providing air distribution or ceiling fans providing air distribution, they're increasing the heat transfer characteristics of the radiant panels for heating and cooling. You also have a little bit of a backup source of cooling, and it's not an N+1 backup type scenario, but if the HVAC system were to fail, you do have some means of cooling available to you in the ceiling fans.
So from a resiliency standpoint, if you lose your primary power supply and you're running on a little bit of solar or you've got a small generator, you do have the ability to turn on some lights and run the ceiling fans and provide some good cooling to the occupants that wouldn't otherwise be available. So a little bit more resiliency available in the building where that's designed that way.
And as far as sustainability goes, again, the ASHRAE headquarters is a great example. You've got a very efficient HVAC system paired with very efficient ceiling fans in what you end up with is an overall very low energy use, very high thermal comfort building. We provide some good occupant level controls of the ceiling fans so that they could adjust their individual thermal comfort paired with a very overall efficient HVAC system design.
Michael Ivanovich:
Right. And to that point as well, about sustainability, Christian, wasn't there a study recently published that you used in an article, you and David Rosen wrote an article in AMCA inmotion about as climate change takes effect and changes some of the climate patterns, that there are ways that the ceiling fans have been able to help mitigate some of that heat stress as a buffer, so to speak, because the design loads are changing, and the HVAC systems may not be able to meet the different temperature requirements, but the circulating fans can help buffer some of that.
Christian Taber:
So that concept started with, we had a client who had a new building with some rooftops on it, and the engineer had sized everything appropriately for the design loads, but the customer had added some new heat generating equipment to the building. And so what was the design capacity changed overnight and now they were unable to maintain their set points. It's a place where it's a commercial space, so there were customers complaining about comfort, and we used ceiling fans to offset that increased load. So the fans were providing three or four degrees of cooling to the occupants. So the fact that they couldn't maintain 75 degrees anymore became less problematic. We started looking at, there was a study published that looked at-it was analogous cities. So as climate change or as the temperatures start to rise, you're seeing what was like Seattle, a city where there were a large number of buildings that didn't have air conditioning, where you're now starting to see air conditioning going into a lot of those places.
And when we started to look at that, it's the same concept. You have design loads changing this time due to the outdoor conditions instead of a new piece of equipment on the inside, but the addition of air movement into those places provides an ability to meet those increasing loads for a longer period of time. So yeah, that article runs through a bunch of different design scenarios. I think there's a couple, it looks at a number of cities and shows how a little bit of air movement paired with that HVAC extends the life of those systems and allows comfort to be maintained in air conditioning spaces and in non-air conditioning spaces how heat-stressing they were to be.
Kelly Barraza:
All right, that was a good dive. Sustainability is something that it's been a topic forever and it's definitely a big topic for our members. So I appreciate you going into that. Michael, do you know where might fans become more important in the future?
Michael Ivanovich:
Sure. So there's some emerging applications for fans related to sustainability that are beginning to appear on the market. I'm seeing, it started out a couple of years ago as a one or two, but now it seems to be growing that there's this field called carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere, so to speak. And there's like 10 different technologies for doing that, including planting more trees to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so biomass, et cetera. But there's another one called direct air capture, DAC, sorry. And so some manufacturers and members have reported to me that they've been involved in these systems where a large bank of fans are installed in a desert or just in the middle of nowhere to literally bring air in from the atmosphere, from the immediate surroundings and put it through a chemical process or mechanical process, a filtration process of some sort that removes carbon from the air.
So it's called direct air capture. And that's growing. And so we're seeing more of that. I think the pandemic really put a lot of focus on the importance of air systems, so not necessarily sustainability, but on the other hand there's a concern that increasing ventilation rates could roll back a lot of the energy savings from energy codes, thus the importance of the federal and state energy appliance regulations to increase the efficiency of fans per se. But in general, there's a lot more focus on ventilation systems in buildings in agriculture, and I think that that's going to raise the profile of air systems in general, especially ducted air systems, which have that flexibility to increase filtration or introduce air treatment to the air streams. So I think between some new sustainability practices, but also an increase in awareness and importance of ventilation in indoor spaces. So I think we're seeing a lot more of that.
Kelly Barraza:
Let's talk a little bit about motors and drives for fans. Any news there?
Michael Ivanovich:
Good idea. Part of the title for the podcast involves drives. So let's talk a little bit about motors and drives. Well, I think one big change is that the DOE motor regulations have been expanded to include air-over motors for the first time, which are common in air systems as you can imagine. So the industry's adjusting to motor regulations and the fan energy index metric was designed to take into account motor and drive losses. So unlike fan efficiency grade, FEG, which only concerned the fan itself minus any consideration for motors and drives, the FEI metric does include motors and drives.
So developments in regulations for motors and evolving technologies for motors and drives definitely impacts the FEI metric and its representation for fan efficiency. So that's a major development. And as Christian mentioned, this also applies to ceiling fans, large diameter ceiling fans because they use the CFEI metric ceiling fan energy index, and that's based on the FEI metric. So developments in motors and drives also affects ceiling fans as well. And to that point, we are seeing more use of electronically commutated motors, ECMs, we're seeing a lot more direct drive systems. So as ECM technology for example, increases the affordability for larger motors associated with that, we're seeing more of that in fan systems.
Kelly Barraza:
Well, are VFDs, variable frequency drives, is this a technology that's really big with fans?
Michael Ivanovich:
Oh yes, absolutely. For decades now, we've been promoting the use of VFDs instead of, for example, using a damper system to throttle fan airflow and instead of putting the brakes and hitting the gas at the same time is you want to use a VFD to modulate the fan performance. So yes, definitely big and there are minimum requirements and actually 90.1 that when fans get to a certain size or any motor gets to a certain size, it has to be included in the VFD.
Kelly Barraza:
So, Christian, do you have anything to say about ceiling and circulating fans for motors and drives?
Christian Taber:
So the regulations that Michael had mentioned for different motor types will likely hit LDCFs. Some of those motors are motors that are used in those products. End user probably won't see many impacts from that. It's just going to be the manufacturer selecting a different motor for the product application. Unlike fans and blowers, standalone fans and blowers, large diameter ceiling fans are generally sold as a complete package. So you're going to have a wall controller, a drive, a motor, and the blade set all is one thing purchased from the manufacturer. It's not often field assembled, so you have a total package. And because of the wired air metrics, CFEI, the efficiency of all of those components have always been a part of our ratings at least since CFEI came into being. So from a motor's drives and fan standpoint, that's just the way our market's always worked because we've always paired drives with our motors.
And part of that goes back to federal regulations. There's a requirement, I think it came out of one of the energy policy acts that required ceiling fans have multiple speeds. So the way that our market has always worked is either the use of a VFD or an ECM to provide that variable speed requirement per the federal regulations. So we're a little different than fans and blowers because we've always had that multi-speed capability. And part of that goes back to users' requirements. Running a fan at full speed in the summer might be great, that provides that nice cooling effect. If it's 65 degrees in the space in the winter, nobody wants a three or four mile an hour breeze blowing across to 55, Standard 55 would call that a draft, and that's undesirable. So we've always had to have the ability to run the fans at high speed in the summer and at lower speeds in the winter.
Kelly Barraza:
Michael, when it comes to drives and sizing and selection process, what advice do you have for system designers?
Michael Ivanovich:
Another good question, Kelly. Thank you. A few things I'd recommend to engineers, A, become knowledgeable of this FEI metric. The metric was created around 2014, 2015. It was embedded in the AMCA standard or was standardized, so to speak, in AMCA Standard 208 in 2018. It appeared in ASHRAE 90.1 in 2019. So it's been around for a long time, but there's a lot of engineers, I'm hearing this from members, I'm experiencing it myself when I do presentations that there's not a lot of knowledge about the metric and in particular how what it means when you apply it. So, for example, if the minimum requirement is an FEI greater than equal to 1.00, there is a caveat to that. And that generally means that at the design point of operations, so engineer picks a duty point around which they select a fan. So for example, in the VAV system, it would be at maximum airflow the hottest day of the year, the fan's going to be running the hardest, so to speak.
So you pick your FEI, your minimum requirement at 1.00 or 0.95 because there is a nuance in 90.1 that if you have a fan in the VAV system or a variable speed application, then you could go as low as 0.95, but for constant speed as 1.00. So I'm just going to use 1.00 for simplicity. So you select a fan at maximum airflow at 1.00. So when the fan is not running full tilt at those slower speeds, the FEI actually will go up because it's not using as much energy, so to speak, it's running slower. So the FEI value goes up, you calculate FEIs at a duty point. So in a sizing and selection situation where the fan is going to be running the most or where it has to operate, you select a fan at that level. And then if the fan is backed off, you'll know that the FEI is generally going to be great.
There might be some cases where it's not entirely true, but again, FEI is a duty point metric, it's important that engineers learn how to use that and see how it performs. Generally FEI ratings are provided through manufacturer size and selection software. We recommend that engineers use third-party certified, or in this case, AMCA certified FEI ratings. I think we're the only ones who are certifying FEI values at this time. But the reason why it's important is because from a manufacturer perspective, FEI is very, very complex. So FEI is calculated for a particular fan configuration, motor, drive, fan, impeller, any things that you, any nuances about the impeller, about partial width, things of that nature. So FEI is calculated for every one of those different instances, and that's generally done with software. So FEI ratings are provided by software. That software is very, very complex. AMCA when they certify the FEI ratings, they actually are certifying that software to provide FEI ratings.
So that's one of the reasons why we stress the importance of AMCA certified FEI ratings for engineered applications. We made it easy to find those types of fans. We have a redirect on our website called www.amca.org/find-FEI, so it's amca.org/find-FEI. And that will link you to our certified ratings program page for FEI. And you'll immediately get a list of all the manufacturers that have certified FEI ratings and you navigate from there. So I think that's really, really important. And then if you're going to be doing that, or however you specify FEI for fans, you want to carry that over into your schedules, make sure you list what the FEI ratings are for those fans in your schedules, and of course hold the spec. And if it's AMCA certified fan, then you want to hold a certification as well. This prevents substitutions down the line where you're not going to get the fan that you want to perform as well as you want in that system.
Kelly Barraza:
And Christian, do you have anything to add on for advice for drives when it comes to sizing and selection with system designers?
Christian Taber:
Since LDCFs are always essentially packaged with drives, I don't really have a lot of sizing guidance as far as we're not trying to pair a drive with a fan that's already done by the manufacturer in advance. But on Michael's note, on specification of fans with drives, I would definitely point back to the DOE federal minimums. We have a minimum CFEI at maximum speed, another minimum CFEI at 40% speed. So as a designer, your specifications, I would recommend that they include those federal minimums, making sure that if you're purchasing a fan, applying application, getting products meets the federal minimums, specifying that the fans are listed in the compliance certification database, which means that the manufacturer has gone through and certified to DOE that they've met all the requirements of the regulations, which is really a minimum to sell the product in the US. That's a fairly low hurdle that I think is necessary in specs.
And then lastly, adding that AMCA certification to make sure that a third party's gone through and made sure that all of those things are true. So to me, that's you want a LDCF or a circulating fan, ideally eventually that meets all the federal minimum efficiencies and then has a third party looking at it to make sure that that product wasn't just efficient the day it was tested, but then does compliance testing at a regular interval to make sure that those products continue to maintain their efficiency from when they were tested.
Kelly Barraza:
All right, so this has been a great talk about fans and drives. Thank you Christian for that, and Michael, thank you both for beating the fans and drives horse very sufficiently for our listeners. And there's probably endless things you could talk about when it comes to this subject. So are there any final words that you'd like to say as we get off this episode?
Michael Ivanovich:
Well, just one little thing. I did recently receive a note from ASHRAE that our panel discussion application was accepted. Thank you very much. This is coming out of TC 5.1 for fans. The panel is panel number seven titled Regulation. It's finally hitting fans, which is scheduled for Wednesday, June 26th, 2024 at 9:45 A.M., Central Daylight Time in Indianapolis. I'm proud to say that on that panel, Laura Petrillo-Groh from AHRI, one of my colleagues in advocacy, John Bade from 2050 Partners who's a key part of the 90.1 mechanical subcommittee and very active in the fan regulations representing California investor-owned utilities. Mark Vanderkooy, engineer from Greenheck fan will be on that panel as well, and Christian and I. This will be very informative entirely promise you that's going to be a lot of developments on fans between now and then. And we can bring you up to date on the things we talked about today. So please remember panel seven at the ASHRAE summer meeting in Indianapolis. And to that point, just to close off, thanks everybody. Thank you, Kelly. Excellent moderation. Thank you Christian for joining me.
Christian Taber:
And again, Kelly, thank you very much for having us. This has been an enjoyable experience.
Kelly Barraza:
Absolutely. Thank you both for lending us your expertise on this topic and your time. Until next time, this has been ASHRAE Journal Podcast. Thank you.
ASHRAE Journal:
The ASHRAE Journal podcast team is editor, Drew Champlin; managing editor, Kelly Barraza; producer and assistant editor, Allison Hambrick; assistant editor, Sara Omer; associate editor, Tani Palefski; and technical editor, Rebecca Matyasovski. Copyright ASHRAE. The views expressed in this podcast are those of individuals only and not of ASHRAE, its sponsors, or advertisers. Please refer to ashrae.org/podcast for the full disclaimer.