Date of Award

8-17-2021

Document Type

Masters Project

Abstract

Researchers with the Alaska Center for Energy and Power have developed a prototype of a non-invasive tool, the Pump Monitoring Apparatus (PuMA), to monitor the heating fuel consumption of a fuel oil vented heater. The goal of this project is to test the PuMA and develop it into a marketable tool for residential heat load research. As a majority of Alaskans rely on fuel oil to heat their homes, monitoring fuel usage is useful for two reasons. First, if the fuel oil vented heater is the only source of heat in the home, fuel oil consumption can be used as a proxy for residential heat load and thermal characteristics of the home can be deduced. Secondly, knowing heating fuel usage daily and seasonally can help inform researchers and consumers how human behavior and different home efficiency measures affect heat demand. There is currently a lack of a historical record of heating fuel consumption, limited understanding of home heating patterns on a daily, monthly and annual basis, and incomplete documentation of community heat loads. PuMA accuracy in calculating total heating fuel consumption was evaluated to range 3-10% from the actual value during testing. Several deployments of the PuMA have demonstrated its capability to remotely capture and report heating fuel consumption data, but have also highlighted technical challenges that will need to be addressed in future iterations of this tool.

Handle

http://hdl.handle.net/11122/14666

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