April 2012

Properly matching VFDs with their most viable applications and being familiar with how equipment will behave differently than with standard controls are crucial to a successful project.

Anti-sweat heater controls can be installed on frozen food/ice cream, and medium temperature reach-in cases. The installation is simple and does not require any case downtime.

Compressor failures and the root causes are fairly well documented, and the change in seasons is a good time to reiterate why compressors fail and how to keep them running smoothly.

If you have year-round heating and cooling loads, a thermally driven heat pump, which works with a modified absorption refrigeration cycle, may be an excellent solution.

The most common type of water side economizer uses a typical open direct-contact cooling tower with plate and frame heat exchanger. Open towers will tend to accumulate ice in extremely cold weather.

Barriers to implementing energy efficiency include lack of time, lack of capital, lack of expertise, and risk aversion. Unfortunately, the program meant to lower these barriers IS the barrier.

Energy Efficiency measures and programs need to provide a benefit or they should not be provided. Thus, some sort of benefit/cost analysis needs to be performed to ensure the measure/program is viable.

These are critical tests in DSM planning and program design. This test determines if the participant will benefit economically from adopting an energy efficiency measure or participating in a program.

Basically, incremental cost is the cost of installing an efficient piece of equipment or system compared to the cost of a baseline system or piece of equipment that would serve the same function.

A custom efficiency guide has to cover all the non-prescriptive measures, essentially those not "regulated" by energy codes such as industrial refrigeration and some component like air compressors.