Improvements at the On-Site Cooling Plant

摘要

While the Empire State Building is on Con Edison's district energy system for steam, the building operates its own cooling loop. The central cooling plant includes seven chillers totaling 7,800 tons - four of them driven by electric motors, three by steam. First installed by York in 1953, they have been refurbished four times, most recently in 2010 as part of the current energy efficiency retrofit. The energy efficiency improvements throughout the building reduced the overall cooling load, making it possible to retrofit the existing chillers rather than replace them - at a significant cost savings for the overall project. While the steam-driven chillers did not require immediate updating (a future project is being considered to retrofit them with variable-speed control systems), the electric chillers underwent extensive overhauls.