Chilled Water Plant Energy Upgrade

Abstract

This project was undertaken to increase the efficiency of the cooling equipment at the Nakamura Courthouse in Seattle, WA which is a building that is managed by the General Services Administration (GSA), the government agency that oversees the administration of several federal buildings in the United States. The building manager and GSA engineers had complaints that their two 200-tons chillers were consuming too much energy and that there should be a way to upgrade these chillers for a more efficient system that saves energy and still satisfy the load of cooling needed in the building. A work plan was developed to remove the old chiller and install a new pony chiller with all its components such as fittings, valves, sensors, and pumps. Also, a new program was developed and implemented in the current server and the controller for the chilled water plant was replaced for the one with the new program which works more efficiently to save energy at low loads. It was proven that the energy efficiency was increased by a 35%. Key Terms – Chilled water system, Design, Efficiency, Programming, Project Management.