Challenge
A multinational company with a large plant in the Czech Republic was planning to rent a Trane chiller to replace two smaller, older units. The company produces components for the automotive industry and required 800kW of cooling capacity for its production line at temperatures of 12°C to 6°C, standard temperatures for the automotive industry. The company also wanted to radically reduce energy consumption and, as the factory is located in the middle of a city, reducing noise was an important consideration.
Solution
The company opted to rent a GVAF245 chiller with maglev compressor on a three-year contract. The chiller would be far more energy efficient than the units it was replacing and audible noise would also be significantly reduced.
Trane was also able to demonstrate that connecting up a dry cooler to the GVAF chiller could provide up to 100% free cooling during the winter months. The company would be able to rely almost entirely on the dry cooler when temperatures were sufficiently low rather than using use the chiller. The company did not know the precise capacity it would need so it agreed to trial Trane’s Dry Cool 500 over the winter period 2022/2023 to determine the level of savings.
Results
The chiller was installed in May 2022 – on a three-year contract – and the Trane Dry Cool 500 unit went into operation at the beginning of December 2022.
Trane is one of very few companies – if not the only company – that has high efficiency maglev chillers available in its rental fleet. For the customer, the GVAF chiller has already proved far more energy efficient than the two smaller units it replaced and has helped to reduce energy consumption significantly.
However, now that winter has set in and local ambient temperatures are down to around -5°C to -10°C, the company is also benefiting from 100% free cooling provided by the dry cooler. While temperatures remain low, the dry cooler will continue to provide free cooling for the entire production line and achieve very substantial cost savings.
The company is delighted with the result which, as promised, is set to provide months of free cooling for its large manufacturing operation.
