Hello all,
At my place of employment we are looking at ways to shed load one day a year during peak seasons. We want to call it a "green day". Obviously peak season will be during the summer months, which works out great for us because campus is a ghost town during this time. Looking at some of the utility bills for last year our peak was August at 8.5 million kwh and our December kwh reading was 4.5 million. After speaking with our HVAC manager I was informed that during the month of December our chillers never turned on. So the difference is roughly 5.5 megawatts on average based on 720 hours.
My question is.... During the peak time when campus is fairly empty would we be able to throttle back on the chillers themselves?
For simplicity reasons I will use our main chiller plant as an example, but we have many chillers throughout campus that we would want to throttle back on. For example: The main chiller plants average kw from June-Sept is 500kw and peak is 700kw. This main plant feeds 4 large buildings. Wouldn't we be able to run the chiller at half this kw and allow the chilled water temp to rise a couple of degrees? OR would this cause for the buildings to get to warm and humid?
My thoughts are that is would save us 1/4 of a megawatt just at this one location. Not to mention we have multiple chillers throughout campus.
I'm looking for your guys thoughts on this. Maybe this is just a pipe dream. Thank you
At my place of employment we are looking at ways to shed load one day a year during peak seasons. We want to call it a "green day". Obviously peak season will be during the summer months, which works out great for us because campus is a ghost town during this time. Looking at some of the utility bills for last year our peak was August at 8.5 million kwh and our December kwh reading was 4.5 million. After speaking with our HVAC manager I was informed that during the month of December our chillers never turned on. So the difference is roughly 5.5 megawatts on average based on 720 hours.
My question is.... During the peak time when campus is fairly empty would we be able to throttle back on the chillers themselves?
For simplicity reasons I will use our main chiller plant as an example, but we have many chillers throughout campus that we would want to throttle back on. For example: The main chiller plants average kw from June-Sept is 500kw and peak is 700kw. This main plant feeds 4 large buildings. Wouldn't we be able to run the chiller at half this kw and allow the chilled water temp to rise a couple of degrees? OR would this cause for the buildings to get to warm and humid?
My thoughts are that is would save us 1/4 of a megawatt just at this one location. Not to mention we have multiple chillers throughout campus.
I'm looking for your guys thoughts on this. Maybe this is just a pipe dream. Thank you