Loop chiller plant design dramatically lowers chilled water costs
Recent improvements in HVAC networking and speed control technologies, together with an improved understanding of the nature of cooling loads in buildings offer exciting opportunities for improving the energy efficiency of chiller plants. A new Loop chiller plant design has been developed that incorporates variable speed control on all plant components. Operation of this cooling plant is coordinated with the load it serves through a control network. This new approach has enormous advantages over traditional optimized plants. The two key advantages of these new Loop design chiller plants designs are: (1) Annual operating energy requirements are reduced by as much as 50% or more when compared to present state-of-the-art optimized chiller plants, and (2) A smaller sized and therefore less costly chiller plant can be designed to serve HVAC loads. The term Loop is employed to describe the technologies employed because the concept employs closed loop control by providing operational feedback from each point of use to the plant. The Loop concept also employs a single, series coupled chilled water loop for higher pumping and distribution efficiencies. This paper presents background and design theory and follows with a case study to introduce the new Loop design and operations concept. Specifics of an actual design are presented along with an explanation of how the principles can be applied economically to all new or existing chiller plant designs to achieve dramatic reductions in both construction costs and energy costs.
- Research Organization:
- Hartman Co., Marysville, WA (US)
- OSTI ID:
- 20030567
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Renewable and advanced energy systems for the 21st Century, Maui, HI (US), 04/11/1999--04/15/1999; Other Information: 1 CD-ROM. Operating system required: Windows i386, i486, Pentium or Pentium Pro, MS Windows 3.1, 95 or NT3.51; Macintosh, Power Macintosh with a 68020 or greater processor, System software version 7.1, 3.5 MB RAM; UNIX; PBD: 1999; Related Information: In: Renewable and advanced energy systems for the 21st century, RAES'99: Proceedings, by Hogan, R.; Kim, Y.; Kleis, S.; O'Neal, D.; Tanaka, T. [eds.], [1125] pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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