Improved Chiller Efficiency Delivers Bottom-Line Savingstest

By Dan Hounsell, Editor

December 2014

The department’s efforts to find greater energy efficiency in its facilities have delivered bottom-line benefits to the university.

“This has resulted in significant savings for the university — about $600,000 so far,” McNicol says. “Having more efficient chillers helps, but we’re also getting much more aggressive in the way we’re managing the buildings. We’ve installed a lot of (variable-frequency drives). We’re not doing it by clocks but by being aggressive with all of these control points in our buildings.”

Interestingly, the university’s success has drawn the attention of one especially interested party.

“It’s interesting to note that we’ve now been audited twice by the local electric company because they almost couldn’t believe how much less electricity we were using,” McNicol says.