Why HVAC plant efficiency matters. To maintain the comfortable conditions within the building envelope, HVAC plant put its effort and consumes almost 40% of total building energy consumption. Even a small inefficiency in operation may account for lacs of rupees increase in annual electricity cost. Utilize your utility & resources efficiently and get desired conditions at minimum operating cost.
The main function of AHU is to provide desired quantity of conditioned air at desired temperature and RH, if not you will feel discomfort or your process and manufacturing may get stuck. So let’s troubleshoot & diagnose where the water is leaking and fix the problem.To get the desired condition; test the AHU and find out whether it is performing at designed value or not.
In central air conditioning system, the most important equipment is chiller, which consumes around 60% of the total power consumption by the system. Hence, running chiller at peak efficiency can save huge amount of energy. Chances of inefficiency are more, because its efficiency depends on many components like Compressor, Evaporator and Condenser. For instance, every 1ºF increase in condenser water temperature can decrease chiller efficiency by 2%. In order to ensure chiller’s efficiency its performance qualification is very important; this will help us to find out pitfalls in inefficiency.
Pump plays a vital role in HVAC system; it works for water circulation within the system. If the water flow rate is not as per the design requirement; the whole utility will starve for it and then no matter how efficient Chiller and AHU are. Without sufficient water quantity none of this equipment can perform. So the pump’s performance is very significant to the system; without this attaining comfort is not possible. Pump’s performance may get affected because of wrong installation, air purging and some other. Though its power consumption is not huge but its poor performance may decline whole plant efficiency.
Cooling tower is the element in HVAC system which dissipates the building heat into the atmosphere by evaporative cooling. Every 1ºF increase in cooling tower water temperature corresponds to 2% decrease in chiller efficiency. If its efficiency declines, whole plant will suffer through poor performance. Over time, cooling tower performance declines can reduce plant profitability, making regular cooling tower performance benchmarking an important plant optimization tool.
Fan circulates the heat carrier i.e. air within the room and to replace room heat, sufficient airflow should be available; if not heat extraction from the room or process would not be possible. Other than this fan performs an important role in maintaining comfort conditions inside the room. Unnecessary noise, vibration and insufficient airflow will disturb the comfort and all these symptoms will point towards inefficient fan operation.