Gas Engine-Driven Chiller Guideline
January 10, 2012Gas Engine-Driven Chiller Guideline
These Advanced Design Guidelines have been developed by the New Buildings Institute in cooperation with Southern California Gas Company to assist designers, program planners, and evaluators to make informed decisions on the application and cost-effectiveness of gas engine-driven cooling.
There are two basic types of gas chillers: engine-driven systems and absorption systems. This Guideline deals specifically with gas engine-driven systems.
These Guidelines are intended to be a step toward a comprehensive approach to design specifications, which encompasses the full range of efficiency options for a building.
This Advanced Design Guideline is based on careful evaluation and analysis of gas engine-driven cooling to determine when it is appropriate, how it is best implemented, how cost effective it is, and how its energy savings are described.
These Guidelines describe efficiency measures that are more advanced than standard practice, yet still cost effective in appropriate applications.
Design Guidelines are used by individuals and organizations interested in making buildings more energy efficient.
They provide the technical basis for defining efficiency measures used in individual building projects, in voluntary energy efficiency programs, and in market transformation programs.
It should be remembered that this Guideline document deals primarily with the comparison of a single efficiency measure and its baseline.
This means that the analysis assumes that all other features of the building are fixed.
This is done primarily for clarity of the analysis, and allows one to focus on the advantages and economics of the single measure.
In reality, most new building design situations involve multiple energy efficiency options.
The cost effectiveness of one measure is often influenced by other measures.
For example, increases in building envelope insulation can often reduce HVAC loads enough to reduce the sizing requirements for the heating and cooling equipment.
It is not uncommon for the cost savings from smaller equipment to offset increased insulation costs.
It is beyond the scope of this Guideline to attempt to address the interactions between measures, especially because these interactions can cover a huge range of options depending on the climate, the local energy costs, the building, and its systems.
Nevertheless, the New Buildings Institute recommends that building designers give careful consideration to measure interactions and to integrated systems design.
This Guideline can provide the starting point by providing insight into the performance of one measure.
