EES Blog

The laws of physics: You can’t get a ticket for violating them, right? Maybe you can: in the form of an electric utility bill. And, as Scotty says, “ya can’t change the laws of physics”.

EES engineers found a way to stop paying the physics tax in a client’s cooling tower water setpoint. Quick test: what happens when your condenser water setpoint is 10 degrees lower than the wet bulb? Quick answer: your towers run at 100% and make no progress on their task.

Time off.  Everybody likes it.  Everybody needs it.  So do air conditioning compressors.  When cycling compressors to maintain comfort, off-time is essential to preventing an early demise of the compressor.

Save on energy resources by utilizing a heat-recovery chiller or DX compressors

Running an air handler in “dehumidification” mode tends to be a resource hog. First, you are using a lot of chilled water to *squeeze* the ever-living-moisture out of the air, then you have to reheat it to make the air temperature comfortable. A double expenditure of energy: cooling and heating.

Utilizing air-side economizers during the cooler seasons can significantly reduce chilled water costs by leveraging outside air for cooling, offering substantial energy savings for businesses in temperate climates.

As we slip into fall, our thoughts turn to pumpkin spice.  Our air-side economizers – a duct and damper arrangement with a control system that enables the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system – however, think about saving chilled water costs.  If we can lower load for the chiller, we can save money due to less energy being used. If the outside air is cool and dry enough, we can open an economizer and let nature do the job instead of using the chilled water coil.  It also usually has the benefit of changing the air more quickly than during the winter or summer seasons.  

Less chilled water pumping also lowers the energy needed to move the water around. We control the differential pressure of the chilled water by slowing down the chilled water pump via a variable frequency drive (VFD), and less load raises the differential pressure.  The tower also must do less work because there is less heat rejected out to it, so the fans run slower.  This saves tower make-up water as well: less evaporation, less water needed.

How Optimizing Variable Refrigerant Flow Cooling Systems can Save Building Managers on Energy Usage

EES is very active with several Variable Refrigerant Flow, VRF, cooling systems’ manufacturers. In this article the condenser-water optimization on Samsung equipment will be discussed.

As in years past, the employees of EES, along with their families and friends, descended upon the home of Dan & Christina Luna for an afternoon of food, fun, sunshine, and swimming. There were several families’ young children, all of whom ended up riding on the “inflate-a-bull”.

Continuing where we left off with optimizing chilled water flow, this article is taking a look at cooling tower control for the same large shopping mall in the DC area. When EES showed up for the first time on site at the chiller/tower plant, the tower control was terrible. The control was “tuned” by the client’s local HVAC tech, and it went from off, to 90%, to off, every few minutes.

As part of an overall optimization and takeback of a commercial mall in Virginia, EES engineers, step by step, enhanced systems to make a chilled-water plant more efficient. This article is about optimizing the chilled water pumping and pressure loops. In future articles, we’ll dig into condenser water loops and the overall plant optimization.

Lighting based on time clocks can sometimes feel like it’s a draining the life out of your wallet. EES tackles this problem with a simple, closed-loop control solution.

It has become common practice to build underground or under-building parking lots for facilities. Each structure requires a CO monitoring system that jumps in to action when the level of CO gas becomes too high. Every one of these systems requires periodic (semi-annual) calibration and testing to protect the patrons and the building owners.