Brief: To replace the end-of-life, failing and inefficient single-circuit chilled-water cooling system on a site of European importance in west London – and do so while maintaining environmental conditions and resilience.
Project value: £5 million
Project duration: 18 months
Description
To improve resilience of the cooling, we replaced this old system with modern equipment that benefits from multiple chilled-water circuits. We also added indirect free-cooling capability to the site to provide considerable operational savings.
The new design consisted of seven 300kw ‘free cooling’ Airedale chillers, matched to 14 Smartcool 150kw downflow chilled-water indoor units. Pipework was installed in seven circuits using thin-wall stainless steel in parallel to the old systems, with a staged transfer between the old and new systems prior to full removal of the old equipment.
The difference in efficiency between the old and new systems is significant. And the fact that the new system uses far less energy is expeically valuable right now given the huge increases in the cost of electricity so far this year, coupled with the likely additional inreases in October and next January. These impressive levels of savings also help to reduce the project’s payback time.