Retrofit “Drives” Chiller Performance at One America Plaza
As energy deregulation continues to roil the California market, the retrofit of two 1,000-ton chillers with variable-frequency drives (vfd’s) at the One America Plaza office tower in San Diego last year has made a dramatic impact on the building’s energy costs. With prices now ranging to $0.30/kW (vs. $0.09 in 1999 and early 2000), the payback period on the two 1,000-hp vfd’s has decreased from the original projection of 2.5 years to 1.5 years (after only nine months of work), and the number is still dropping.
“On this kind of project, your savings are there,” says Paul Wolf, chief engineer of the building. “It would be a very good project for any building, even if energy prices were not increasing.”