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Variable Speed Drive

Variable speed drives increase chiller efficiency, save $1 million to date

Fortune 500 computer manufacturer cuts energy consumption and cost without sacrificing comfort for 20,000 headquarters employees

Imagine the challenge of providing comfort cooling to 20,000 employees across a 4.5 million square foot campus. Now, imagine keeping them comfortable, while cutting energy consumption by 10 percent. That was the challenge faced by facility managers at the world headquarters of a technology manufacturer located in Round Rock, Texas.

 

In the highly competitive personal computer industry, every dollar counts. Operational costs must be kept in check to hold product prices down. So when the facility managers began to explore their options to cut energy costs, they reached out to Johnson Controls, a company they’d been working with for nearly 20 years. In response, the Johnson Controls team developed a plan to increase the efficiency of the campus’ existing chillers from another manufacturer, using the latest in YORK® Variable-Speed Drive (VSD) technology.

 

Johnson Controls has been manufacturing variable-speed drives for centrifugal chillers since 1979 and, today, YORK OptiSpeed Variable-Speed Drives are designed to cut chiller energy use and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by as much as 30 percent per year. YORK VSDs are universally applicable, too; they can be installed on any chiller, regardless of manufacturer. With that flexibility, the Johnson Controls team installed YORK VSDs on both YORK and non-YORK chillers, as part of an overall strategy to deliver energy and operational savings to the customer.

 

The first phase of the project delivered better-than-expected results. While the anticipated return on investment for phase one was 36 months, benefits were evident immediately. In fact, the customer’s energy use dropped by such a significant amount, the company’s accounting team thought its utility bills were inaccurate! Facility managers were so impressed with the savings, the company moved into phase two ahead of schedule.

 

Today, the variable-speed drive retrofits are helping the company meet its goal to reduce energy consumption by 10 percent which has already translated to $1 million in accumulated energy savings.

 

Learn more about the experience of this computer manufacturer in this case study.

 

Get more information on variable speed drives or read additional case studies on our website.

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