Warming up the chillers

Energy savings follow from a small adjustment to a cooling system at Bath Spa University

The ‘Twiverton Chillers’ may sound like a moody heavy-rock band, but is actually the name given to the cooling facility that prevents Bath Spa University’s enormous IT system from overheating.

And the chillers are large. Each is bigger than a 4x4 ‘Chelsea tractor’, and they have an energy appetite to match. Clearly if energy savings are to be found, this is a good place to look. But energy management is rarely simple; adjusting the chillers could have a knock-on effect of slowing down the university’s computers.

Under the auspices of Our Big Energy Challenge, a team consisting of chiller technicians, the University’s IT department and a building controls consultant established that a small adjustment could be made that would cut the chillers’ energy use without causing the servers’ performance to decline.

The twiddling of the dials took place in August 2007, and Bath Spa University is looking forward to savings of around £3,600 a year. A simple and very low cost measure – but one backed by a lot of technical due diligence.