2013 Technology Award Case Studies Figure 4: Chilled water flow. Floor Openings for Cable straint factored into several Crane Operating Zone decisions including the decision to maximize the potential chilled water capacity on the available site. Cost effective decisions were made in several areas including constructing the plant building in one phase versus two, saving construction overheads and inefficiencies. Cooling towers were changed from concrete Figure 5: Overhead crane system. to field-erected fiberglass to minimize the weight on top of the building and eliminating a energy eff iciency improvements. These improvements building expansion joint during construction to ensure struc- resulted in more than $1 million energy savings durtural integrity with a 120 mph (193 kmh) wind loading. Fi- ing the f irst year of operation. The real-time electricity nally, the net result of making cost effective decisions was that pricing made large energy savings possible during peak the project was constructed $15 million under budget. days of the year. Figure 7 shows this energy savings on an hourly basis, peaking at more than $16,000 that was Operation Costs saved in a single hour when electricity was selling at The first portion of this article highlights some of the $3,000/MWh. 32 ASHRAE Journal ashrae.org July 2013