CHILLED WATER LOOP
Purpose
The creation of the utilities master plan identified an opportunity
that would provide important redundancies for the College and reduce
annual energy costs.
The first part of the project involved the addition  of
a 1000 ton chiller in the Science Center.
This provides both important redundancy for the science complex
itself and the additional capacity to support the second part of
the project, an expanded chilled water loop. The loop itself now
connects the Science Center to several key academic and administrative
buildings on the central campus, all of which are currently air
conditioned, including Art/Art museum, Dwight/Williston/Miles-Smith,
Skinner, Ciruti, Blanchard, and Mary Wooley Hall including Chapin
Auditorium. The loop can be expanded in the future should it become
cost effective to do so.
Cost Reduction
This project is estimated to reduce annual energy
and maintenance costs by about $75,000. A central chilled water
plant with
"wet" evaporative technology provides cooling at about
half the cost of our smaller distributed air cooling systems. Another
more significant reason is diversity. when a central water distribution
system is used. the central plant capacity is based on peak simultaneous
campus load, which is always less than the sum of peaks for each
building. This is true because not all building peak at the same
time during the day due to varying solar load, occupant usage patterns,
etc.
 It
will also provide an opportunity for future cost avoidance as some
of the smaller chillers are not replaced or are used elsewhere on
campus. The project will also reduce annual maintenance costs by
$11,000 annually.
Other Benefits
 The
old Mary Wooley Hall cooling system could only cool only Chapin
Auditorium or the rest of the building. The loop will now support
the entire building's air conditioning needs.
For Dwight and Blanchard Halls, this change will reduce
noise and improve the aesthetics of the area around the buildings.
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