Smith Engineering/Case Studies/Optimizing a District Cooling System
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Optimizing a District Cooling System

Optimizing the largest deep river cooling and thermal storage systems in New York City

Property Overview

The property is a cluster of 4 buildings representing more than 8 MM Sqft all interconnected with services provided by a district energy plant. The facility was constructed in the early 1980s. The project was presented at the 2020 International District Energy Association’s Campus Energy event. You can review the project presentation at Campus Energy. The project was the optimization of the largest sensible TES CHW system in Manhattan with Hudson River heat rejection.

Project Scope

Smith Engineering worked with the Vice President of Engineering, Chief Engineer, Carrier Corp and the Local 94 team to devise an optimization strategy for the site taking into account the unique set of assets and the restrictions of the access at 5 stories below grade.

The final scope was how to leverage, refurbish, and modify existing assets such as the chillers, pumps, thermal energy storage tanks and heat exchangers.  The project scope starts with understanding operations through modeling to devise an optimization and rebate strategy to achieve the customer’s targeted objectives of reliability, sustainability, and a positive financial impact to the bottom line.

You can also read about the project here.

The Chief Engineer won the 2021 NYC New York Energy Consumers Council (“NYECC”) ENYA Award for the project.

Disruptive Technology. Sustainable Efficiency.
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Smith Engineering Services

Energy Engineering  

Rebates and Incentive Management – Managed the entire financial incentive program including application, energy models, and successful completion and measured success by Con Edison

Design/Build

VFD Replacements or Upgrades – Design services, construction administration, system start-up for the new VFDs on 7 chillers

Instrumentation Design – Recommend and design new instrumentation requirements including locations, types, quantities, make/model, communications protocol, and trending characteristics.

Performance Optimization

  • Design and Implement Optimized Sequence of Operations
    • Chilled Water Pump Staging
    • Chilled Water Temperature Reset
    • Chilled Water DP Optimization
    • Chiller Staging
    • Condenser Water Reset Sequence
    • TES Optimization
    • Summer/Winter Optimal Load Staging

Fundamental Services

Operator Training – Initial project training on new control system, optimization strategy and TES dispatch strategy.  Perform quarterly training on the continued optimization of the chiller plant.

Connected Services

Provided the BEP Analytics data driven software as a service to provide greater overall insight and measurement on the operation of the plant

Disruptive Technology. Sustainable Efficiency.
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