One college campus finds a way to chill out while saving energy.

By Carol Brzozowski

While heat waves made life uncomfortable in the state of New York as elsewhere in summer 2006, an approach undertaken in Albany began making its own waves.

A $3.5 million absorption chiller air-cooling project is helping to reduce electricity demands.

An absorption chiller uses natural gas to save energy during peak electrical loads, taking electric chillers offline when it’s economically feasible to do so, says Steve Harrington, lead project engineer for the New York Power Authority (NYPA) and project manager for the absorption chiller project at the University of Albany, State University of new York.

The campus has five chillers in its central chill plant, including three electric units and two absorption chillers that provide 1,500 tons of air conditioning.

The absorption chiller air-cooling project was implemented in August 2005 as a partnership with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and NYPA, the United States’ largest state-owned power organization, which operates 18 generating facilities and more than 1,400 circuit-miles of transmission lines.

“Typical electric chillers are run by electric motors and go through an electric cycle similar to a refrigerator,” Harrington says. “The absorber, on the other hand, uses chemical reactions fed by a heat process.”

Exchanging Heat
That heat can come from many sources, but UAlbany utilizes high-temperature coils that boil the water out of lithium bromide, sending it through several heat exchanges to increase the efficiency, explains James Horwedel, plant utilities engineer III.

The system’s hardware includes a cooling tower, evaporation section, and tubes for the chilled water. Campus utility workers bring the water temperature down to between 42.5°F and 42°F.

Lithium bromide—one of the chemicals used in the process—is a salt solution that readily absorbs water vapor. Alcohol additives are used to allow better surface contact in the tubes. The system also operates under high vacuum—down to about –29.7 inches of mercury.

“We have to run the vacuum pump quite a lot to keep the –29.7-inch mercury vacuum in there,” says Horwedel.

Project managers say usage of the absorption chiller has generated more than $260,000 savings in energy costs in its first year of operation, with efficiency for local energy fuel consumption at 70%–80%, compared to 45%–50% for typical electrical production. Similar savings are anticipated in subsequent years of use, with a 50% cut in energy costs realized.

While high energy demands can take a toll on consumption, extreme temperatures can exact a human toll as well: Heat is the second-leading cause of natural disaster deaths in the United States, following deaths from extreme cold temperatures, according to the National Weather Service.

Triple-digit temperatures in the summer of 2006 caused record-breaking demands for electricity throughout the country as major metropolitan areas struggled to deal with the challenge. Power outages in Queens, NY, persisted for more than a week. More than three-dozen deaths occurred in California due to unprecedented heat, and Midwest power outages also created discomfort.

An Executive Order
Albany’s absorption chiller project is rooted in an executive order issued by then New York Governor George Pataki, requiring any buildings owned, leased, or operated by state agencies to accomplish a 35% energy reduction by the year 2010, relative to 1990 levels.

“The electrical rate for commercial users is not like a home, where you have a flat rate that you are billed at per kilowatt hour,” points out Jim Kelley, executive officer for the facilities department for UAlbany.

“It varies from hour to hour, and electricity in the summer—especially in the peak period between noon and 6 p.m.—is the most expensive.”

Therefore, reducing air-conditioning consumption was critical to getting the electrical load down. Kelley adds that, aside from normal consumption, the campus had “super high prices.”

The energy strain on New York’s electrical grid can be particularly demanding at times. Kelley says the Albany area, while not as taxing on the system as the New York City region, is still congested.

Kelley notes the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) coordinates independent power producers, sets prices, and regulates the market.

“NYISO was formed as a nongovernmental body to regulate the state’s entire electrical marketplace,” Kelley explains. As such, there are several distinct zones. UAlbany is located in the “congested” capital region zone, Kelley says.

“They use the word ‘congested’ to explain the wires are overwhelmed to be able to transmit energy to everybody who needs it,” Kelley says. “Downstate, it is much worse. Con Edison has been having a lot of problems in the New York City region with congestion.”

Procedures in his region call for area government offices to receive alerts or notices to shut down equipment in order to help the private sector and individual families avoid brownouts, Kelley says.

“If big institutions reduce their load, it’s more likely the congestion won’t get to 100% and break it where brownouts start to occur,” he says, adding that only happens during extremely hot days. This is the price a region pays for economic development and new industry, Kelley points out.

“That requires more electricity, and that’s why we are doing things like using gas instead of electricity where it is applicable,” he says.

Lowering Utility Bills—and Greenhouse Gases
Kelley was UAlbany’s energy director at the time the absorption air chiller was installed. He had been charged with reducing electrical consumption, which accounted for a majority of the campus utility costs. Presently, UAlbany spends $15 million annually in utility costs.
He and other university officials met with NYPA representatives to discuss the idea of absorption chilling.

“There’s a smaller electricity requirement,” says Kelley. “It uses only 75 amps just to run some fan motors and incidental equipment, compared to 1,100 amps for an equivalent electric chiller.”

Those figures were attractive to university officials. NYPA officials spoke with NYSERDA officials, who indicated a willingness to contribute a grant of a maximum of $500,000 toward the project. Kelley’s team crunched the numbers, concluding the university could recoup its costs in about 14 years through electricity savings.

The process of acquiring and installing the absorption air chiller took less than a year and was on budget. Installation included electrical upgrades and adding components to integrate the chiller into the system. Just the first year’s savings was pleasing, especially given the NYPA grant is performance-based, Kelley says.

“They are very tough in that, so hitting the $260,000 target was very good,” says Kelley, offering credit to UAlbany’s central chill plant operators. Also, the campus is reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides.

A Ready Resource
Aside from the economics and conservation savings, there are other benefits, such as access and supply, Kelley points out.

“Natural gas is a North American product, just as oil is from various points of the world,” he points out. “Electricity in some plants is run by oil, and electricity also is in great demand during that expensive consumption period.

“From a reliability standpoint, when other people have to worry about having electricity available for air conditioning, like what happened in New York over a period of a few weeks, we didn’t have any impact at all, because 85% of our air conditioning was coming from gas,” he says. “We were able to run that small 75-amp electrical load, which really isn’t significant, run the gas chillers, and keep all the educational programs and other activities at the university unaffected by keeping the place cool.”

There are times when the university has to run electrical chillers in addition to the gas, Kelley says. The campus has added new buildings: a life science center and a new administration building. “With those additional cooling needs, we’re not saving the maximum amount of electricity we hope to,” Kelley says. “But that only happens on really hot days. We primarily rely on the gas chiller.” The gas chiller also serves the university during winter months.

“There are some needs for air conditioning during the year, like in computer server rooms and some laboratories in the winter, so we can run it year-round,” Kelley says. Kelley and Horwedel say the absorption system is performing to expectations. Harrington notes the system can be high-maintenance at times.

Reducing the consumption of air-conditioning was critical to getting the electrical load down.

“Electric chillers start with the push of a button,” he says. “These are more temperamental. You need a good utilities staff, and UAlbany has a 24-and-seven utilities staff capable of handling it.” NYPA provides training, so the utilities staff is competent to manage the system.

“Part of the project is training in each component,” Harrington says. “There are a lot of components to go with this.” For example, NYPA installed a strainer in the chilled water system to filter sludge and scale that is transmitted through the pipes, and trained the staff in its operation.

Horwedel believes the maintenance is comparable to that of the electric units. Recently, the utilities staff was dealing with a seal that had been leaking on the high-temperature solution pump and had to remove the lithium bromide solution to take the seal off of the pump to work on it. As for routine maintenance, oil and filter changes on the pump are necessary to keep them running smoothly, he notes.

Analysis Is the Key
Kelley says gas absorption systems aren’t for everyone. “You have to do an ROI [return on investment] to see if it is economically feasible for your particular facility,” Kelley says. “But there are also high-efficiency electric chillers and other emerging products as time goes on that will become even more efficient and better.” Harrington says absorption systems are cost-effective depending on gas rates and how utilities charge for them.

Kelley advises government and nonprofit institutions to contact their state agencies to avail themselves of opportunities to determine feasibilities for state-funded energy-saving technologies.

NYPA is presently looking at another absorption chiller project in Albany that would utilize electricity from waste heat from microturbines to feed the absorbers, Harrington says.

Other campuses in the State University of New York system have absorption chillers and NYPA has an ongoing relationship with the system, giving each campus hands-on assistance in developing its own energy usage requirements with NYPA contractors or obtaining materials while NYSERDA provides funding, Harrington notes.

 “NYPA is the entity that’s helping to drive this move to help these campuses and other state facilities lower their consumption of fossil fuels, decrease the amount of electricity they consume, reduce those components that add to global warming, and help make the state more energy efficient,” Harrington says.

Harrington says he gets an occasional call from an out-of-state engineer inquiring about the program.

Kelley points out that while other states have started such energy-efficient measures sooner, it would be beneficial if an independent agency conducted an analysis that would “prompt states to be competitive and try to best other states.

“That would also be attractive to businesses,” he says. “It’s nicer to offer incentives to go beyond energy and provide other benefits. There’s usually an economic or environmental benefit, and New York provides a variety of tax and energy technology assistance programs to try to boost the economy and bring in industries.”

Although the university hasn’t conducted a comprehensive campuswide energy audit, Kelley says, the installation of the absorption air chiller acts to reduce UAlbany’s energy requirements as a step to getting a handle on the institution’s overall energy needs.
An energy audit has been under consideration at UAlbany.

Kermit Hall—the university’s president at the time of the installation of the absorption air chiller before his death in 2006—was an advocate of sustainable energy.

“He created a sustainable environment and energy task force, and its recommendation is to conduct a full-scale audit or use NYPA and NYSERDA resources to a greater extent than we have in the past,” Kelley says.

In preparation for such an audit, Kelley has attended energy-auditing courses offered by the Association of Energy Engineers.

Another Area of Change: Computers on the Campus
UAlbany has more than 10,000 computers on campus, “so that’s a tremendous amount of computers drawing energy around the clock,” Kelley notes.

The computers are set to shut off automatically after a specified time period. Plans are in place to enact a campaign to encourage those with computers that are not campus property to adjust their settings accordingly.

“It’s a no-cost initiative that will save energy,” Kelley says. “We’ve already implemented it in the facilities department. It will go out to administrative offices next, then to the academic side, and then to the students.”

Additionally, the university has converted to flat-panel monitors.

“As the price of the flat-panel monitors has come down, more people are specifying those,” Kelley says. “People like them anyway because of the various aesthetic and visual performance features they present, and they are smaller and lighter. They are much less energy-consuming than the cathode-ray tube [CRT] monitors.”

They offer an environmental benefit in that there are no special disposal costs, Kelley says of flat-panel monitors.

“You can’t just dump CRTs in a landfill; they contain hazardous materials,” he says. “We had to pay up to $5 per monitor depending on how many monitors we were disposing.”

Energy-Savings Efforts Overall
Other policies in the university’s ongoing effort to identify savings opportunities include shutting down some elevators in buildings with multiple units (while still maintaining compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act), turning off bathroom and room exhausts and other extraneous fans, and shutting down the three fountains—including the main fountain, which serves as the campus epicenter from an aesthetic and communal standpoint.

With only a few exceptions, the end users of campus energy hardly discern the difference.

“There are some requirements around the campus for individual air conditioners for local cooling of special spots,” says Kelley. “We turn those off as long as it doesn’t endanger any animals that might be living there—such as the life science area, where there are experiments that require cooling.”

Additionally, the campus maintains emergency lighting for the safety of the faculty and students.

“It remains cool, but we turn off or reduce lighting in some areas, and we try to do it sensibly where the campus is still operational,” he says. “For instance, in the library, we might cut the lighting in half, so it’s a bit darker, but you are still able to find a book.”

Other measures UAlbany has instituted include converting to compact fluorescent light bulbs and shutting off electricity where it is not needed, which can save as much as 40% on energy bills, Kelley says.

Another measure the university has taken is the use of occupancy sensors, which were installed with a $30,000 grant from NYSERDA.

“We did it wherever it made sense so that when there was no need for lighting, the lights would turn themselves off,” Kelley explains. “We don’t have the manpower to check every room in every building in the campus. The occupancy sensors paid for themselves immediately because the grant was sufficient to pay for the sensors.”

As for now, such measures as the absorption chiller project are being closely monitored by university officials to ascertain overall effectiveness.

“We don’t want to be inaccurate in touting savings that aren’t really relevant, so there will be an assessment phase,” says Kelley. “Everybody is trying to save as much as possible with the resources we have, taking advantage of financing options to help along with the commonsense kind of ideas we’re trying to spread the word about.”

Coral Springs, FL–based journalist Carol Brzozowski writes on energy-related topics.

DE - March/April 2007