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NYU Medical Center

New York University Medical Center (NYUMC) in Manhattan is a three million square-foot facility consisting of the NYU School of Medicine and the NYU Hospital Center. NYUMC underwent an energy efficiency audit to evaluate its chilled water plants. Despite the 13,200 ton capacity of the chiller plants, the Medical Center often had difficulty meeting the peak cooling needs of approximately 9,800 tons in some areas in the facility due to insufficient chilled water flow. The traditional solution to this problem would be to install booster pumps in the locations which have insufficient flow. However, a study of the distribution system indicated that its pumping capacity was more than sufficient and that the optimal solution would be to remove excess pumps and improve the control of the system to better balance the distribution of chilled water flow.

The chiller plants achieved a significant energy savings once the system was modified to use variable volume primary pumping and unnecessary pumps were removed. Control of the pumps is accomplished by using a common differential pressure sensor which allows for minimum flow requirements to be met at the most hydraulically distant points in the system while preventing the pumps from fighting against each other and impeding flow. These modifications resulted in a system with both increased reliability and reduced operating cost.

Implementation of the recommendations has resulted in:

1. Improved system performance
2. The elimination of 1,290 hp of unnecessary pumps from service
3. An estimated energy reduction of 2,235,000 kWh per year
4. A peak demand reduction of 962 kW
   
   
   Annual savings of $460,000