Energy-conscious building owners and operators, by working with engineers and mechanical contractors, can leverage analytics to evaluate chiller performance trend data. Information gathered from these trends guides maintenance, prevents performance degradation, and preserves the chiller's design-specified operation throughout its useful life. But identifying potential problems is only half the battle. To correct problems, owners must have a process in place to bring the identified findings to people able to make appropriate adjustments to the system. These can include programming changes requiring a controls contractor; refrigerant evacuation, weighing, and charging done by a chiller technician; and defective equipment replacement by a mechanical contractor. Fault detection and analytics provide diagnostics that provide invaluable insight to equipment operation. The interconnected nature the equipment makes analytics even more useful because they assist in connecting the dots to ensure efficient operation across chillers, cooling towers, pumps, and the rest of the airside equipment in the HVAC&R system. Owners must have support teams and contractors to identify problems, and successfully execute a plan to keep their chiller plants and peripheral equipment running at optimal efficiency and reliability throughout the year.
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