Prognostics system and method for hvac system comfort failure forecasting

A heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) analytics system comprising:

• an HVAC unit configured to deliver conditioned air to a targeted area;
• an HVAC analytics engine in electronic communication with the HVAC unit, HVAC analytics engine comprising:
• a processor;
• a memory comprising computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations, the operations comprising:
• obtaining HVAC data for the HVAC unit;
• obtaining an HVAC unit characteristic of the HVAC unit;
• determining an HVAC comfort performance index (CPI) in response to the HVAC data and the HVAC unit characteristic;
• determining an HVAC CPI degradation trend line in response to the HVAC comfort performance index;
• obtaining weather data for a geographical area where the HVAC unit is located, the weather data including a predicted outside air temperature (OAT);
• and
• determining a point in time where the predicted OAT is equivalent to the HVAC CPI degradation trend line.

A computer program product tangibly embodied on a computer readable medium, the computer program product including instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising:

• obtaining heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) data for an HVAC unit in electronic communication with an HVAC analytics system;
• obtaining an HVAC unit characteristic of the HVAC unit;
• determining an HVAC comfort performance index (CPI) in response to the HVAC data and the HVAC unit characteristic;
• determining an HVAC CPI degradation trend line in response to the HVAC comfort performance index;
• obtaining weather data for a geographical area where the HVAC system is located, the weather data including a predicted outside air temperature (OAT);
• and
• determining a point in time where the predicted OAT is equivalent to the HVAC CPI degradation trend line.