SmartSense Delivers 11.1% Reduction in Annual Energy Costs By Optimising Chiller Efficiency
Impact Summary
• Identified monthly energy savings of 8,380 kWh, enhancing the client’s sustainability goals.
• Achieved a 40% reduction in maintenance costs from timely alerts and data-driven decision making.
The Challenge
India's leading telecom provider faced chiller plant operations-related challenges at its Manesar facility. Despite rigorous maintenance, the facility was plagued by repeated cases of evaporator fouling, affecting the equipment's cooling capacity. Since sustaining the chillers is critical to the operations, the company was spurred into seeking an innovative solution to understand the root cause of the problem and improve this critical asset's life expectancy, increase its efficiency, reduce costs and the facility's carbon footprint.
The Solution
Ecolibrium's AI-powered decarbonisation platform, SmartSense, was installed to evaluate key performance indicators (KPIs), identify asset anomalies, enhance energy savings, and reducing downtime to uphold operational efficiency.
The team deployed SmartSense to monitor a 265 TR water-cooled chiller managing cooling loads at the facility. Over a weeklong analysis, the platform assessed crucial metrics—suction and discharge pressure, condenser water temperatures, and chiller efficiency (ikW/TR) in real-time. This helped establish baselines for input, load, and seasonal conditions, alerting users to threshold breaches in real-time. Through IoT gateways, the system efficiently created digital twins for predictive analytics on asset performance.
Ecolibrium's AIL/ML algorithms delivered actionable insights, pinpointing the chiller's operating deviations outside of designated parameters. The evaporator fouling was mainly attributed to approach temperature inconsistencies and low chilled water flow rates.
The Ecolibrium team recommended operating a short-term comparable-capacity backup chiller, consuming less energy than the original. Further in-depth data analysis identified flow deviations and challenges within the valve. The client's team responded promptly, temporarily shutting down the asset to install replacements and avoiding potential breakdowns.
The Outcomes
The combination of SmartSense's AI-powered insights and Ecolibrium's partnership-focused approach resulted in significant energy optimisation, increased operational efficiency, carbon footprint reduction and cost savings for the client.
• Identified monthly energy savings of 8,380 kWh, an 11.1% reduction in annual energy costs, enhancing the client's sustainability goals.
• Integration with the Building Management Systems (BMS) provided a single-pane view of chiller energy use and efficacy, contributing to a 40% decrease in maintenance costs from timely alerts and data-driven decision making.
• Discussions are currently taking place with the client about extending Ecolibrium's services to all their India-based facilities.
If your organisation is also searching for solutions for increasing older asset efficiency and/or to extend their life expectancy – or if you want to explore how our solutions can optimise your asset operational efficiency, lower maintenance costs and enhance sustainability, contact our team for a personalised demo and consultation.
