Your Building Is Burning Money On Cooling

When you think of giant energy wasting systems in buildings, you think immediately of boilers and heating systems spewing out carbon emissions. But the second biggest source of energy waste is central cooling systems. Almost every central cooling system is running incredibly inefficiently.

Most central cooling systems are composed of two parts - chillers and a cooling tower.

The chiller cools water that is used to reduce the building temperature

The chillers usually use electricity to cool water that then is circulated throughout the building to cool individual spaces. The chillers themselves usually are either running a fixed temperature, which is really, really bad, or they're running what's known as an outdoor reset algorithm which just uses the outdoor temperature to slightly adjust the temperature of that water.

When you don't know what the temperatures are inside or how effectively the building is being cooled, you end up having to over cool that water. That doesn't sound like a big deal, except there are literally thousands of gallons of water in the pipe.

The amount of energy required to move the pipe temperature even one degree could be something like 5% to 7% of the building's cooling energy usage. This energy waste could amount to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

Smart Controls use indoor sensors to ensure the chiller isn't running excessively

If we can precisely cool that water to exactly the right temperature, every given hour of the day, you end up saving anywhere from 10% to 20% on your electric bill.

Fortunately, now there are smart controls that can use indoor sensors throughout the building to more precisely tell the chillers what temperature to chill the water at and still make spaces just as comfortable.

Now let's look at the cooling tower.

The cooling tower takes the heat from the building and exhausts it out

If you think about how your body works when you get hot, you sweat. The sweat evaporates and heat leaves your body. A cooling tower operates in a very similar way, except in a very giant system, usually on the top of buildings.

The problem is that the hot water being brought to the cooling tower requires one or many pumps. Those pumps use a ton of electricity. And, unfortunately, those pumps, in almost every building in the country, have literally only one speed - maximum speed.

VFDs running with Smart Controls reduce the energy to exhaust heat

This is obviously incredibly inefficient. The solution to this is to install what's known as VFDs, or Variable Speed Motors, that allow those pumps to to change the speed based on how much that water needs to be cooled.

It's a much more energy efficient way of accomplishing the same result. Typical VFDs can cut your energy usage by about 10% and will pay for themselves in only a couple of years.

So how do you get effective smart controls installed on your chillers and VFDs installed on your cooling tower? Well, the great news is we're about to launch both.

If you're accepted in our pilot, you can get both, VFDs and Smart Controls for free

If you're interested in participating in our pilot, all you have to do is fill out the form below. It takes less than 2 minutes and we'll tell you if your building is eligible to be part of this cooling trial.

Ice cold air conditioning on a 100 degree day is something pretty much everybody can appreciate.

But running energy efficient cooling systems that are not only good for the planet, but save your building a lot of money, now that is cool.