Bridgeford Group were engaged to review an existing High Temperature Heating Hot Water system central plant with a view to increasing the efficiency of the plant and identifying options for the low-load operation. The plant serves a large University campus, and is over 20MW in capacity, but the University’s net-zero goals, reduction in building load and electrification via heat-pumps has resulting in the plant operating at part load.

The review report identified a number of items for review by the University for future projects including

• O2 trim control with VSDs
• Flue economizers (heat recovery on flue discharge)
• HTHHW reset
• Leak detection monitoring
• Conversion to a true primary/secondary system
• Modification to boiler staging
• Differential temperature optimisation
• Removal of Absorption chillers

The detailed investigation identified natural gas and electricity savings in the order of 20%, resulting in over $262,000 per year cost reduction and a simple pay back period of just over 3 years.