The following article was published in ASHRAE Journal, August 2004.

© Copyright 2004 American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and

Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. It is presented for educational purposes only. This article may not be copied and/or distributed electroni-
cally or in paper form without permission of ASHRAE.

How
Chillers
React to
Building
Loads
By Kwok Tai Chan, Ph.D., Member ASHRAE, and Fu Wing Yu detailed features of the building: materi-
als, orientation, construction, ventilation
and air-conditioning requirements, occu-

T his article considers the importance of understanding the

interaction between building cooling load and chiller load
pancy, equipment power density, and op-
erating schedules.
Using this program, detailed informa-
tion about a generic office building in
profiles. It discusses the characteristics of building cooling load Hong Kong1 was compiled into a build-
in terms of a weather load profile and a load frequency profile, ing description file for the model. Hourly
weather data in 1989 were used. It was
and presents four design options with respect to the number assumed that every piece of air-handling
equipment was capable of delivering the
and size of chillers. cooling energy required to match the
cooling demand for the thermal condi-
A schedule of staging chillers together full load and, therefore, to decrease over- tions specified in each zone. The charac-
with the weather-load profile of a hypo- all electricity consumption. teristics of a building’s cooling load4 are
thetical office building1 can be used to de- expressed as a weather-load profile,
termine a weather-load profile of chillers. Methods which shows how hourly building cool-
This profile is used as an input into a chiller Evaluation of building load and ing load (expressed as a ratio to its peak
system model to assess how much elec- chiller load profiles. TRNSYS2 is a com-
About the Authors
tricity the chillers consume year-round. puter simulation program that contains a
Kwok Tai Chan, Ph.D., is an associate professor
The assessment shows that it is desirable multizone building model to calculate the
and Fu Wing Yu is a Ph.D. research student in the
to use unequally sized chillers within a hourly cooling load of a building based Department of Building Services Engineering, The
chiller plant to prolong their operation near on a combination of weather data and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong.

52 ASHRAE Journal ashrae.org August 2004

 ‘ unequally sized chillers within a chiller plant to pro-
The assessment shows that it is desirable to use
long their operation near full load and, therefore, to
decrease overall electricity consumption.
value) changes in response to outdoor temperature throughout
the year (Figure 1); and a load-frequency profile, which shows
how the percentage of total operating hours varies at different
ranges of building load ratios (Figure 2).
Table 1 illustrates the four design options (OP1 to OP4) pro-
posed for the chiller plant serving the hypothetical office build-
ing. The peak load of the building was 6389 kW (1,817 tons).
OP1 and OP2 typically are used in many existing Hong Kong
air-cooled chiller plants. OP3 and OP4 are not used often, but
these options serve to increase the number of steps of total
cooling capacity, allowing the chillers to operate more fre-
quently at full load.
Using these options, it was possible to ascertain how the
chillers should be staged at different building cooling loads.
To allow the chillers to operate at maximum efficiency as
much as possible, chiller sequencing was implemented so all
chillers were operating at the same part load, and no addi-
tional chillers in the chiller arrangement started to operate
until each of the operating chillers was running at full load.
Following this strategy for staging chillers, it was possible to
evaluate the effect of both the weather-load and load-fre-
quency profiles on energy usage.
Calculation of the annual electricity consumption of chill-
ers. A chiller system model computed annual electricity con-
sumption of chillers with a given weather-load profile (showing
how hourly chiller load varies with outdoor temperature) and
staging schedules at various building cooling loads. This model
was developed under the TRNSYS environment and could
determine the hourly energy consumption for air-cooled chill-
ers at various load and weather conditions.3 Within this model,
mechanistic relations between chiller components were taken
into account.
In simulating the operation of a chiller, the mass balance of
refrigerant and energy balance at the evaporator, the compres-
sors and the condenser had to be satisfied. An algorithm was
used to compute the number of staged condenser fans by a
condensing temperature setpoint. This model was experimen-
tally verified by an error analysis, which enabled all operating
variables to be accurately predicted. Figure 3 shows the part-
load performance curves used in the chiller model. These curves
are generally applicable to describing the efficiency of air-
cooled reciprocating chillers with a nominal cooling capacity
of 703 to 1406 kW (200 to 400 tons).
August 2004
’
Results
Weather-load and load-frequency profiles of a hypotheti-
cal office building. Based on local weather conditions in 1989,
there were 3,085 hours at which cooling energy was required
for the building, and this accounted for 98.5% of the total work-
ing hours (3,131 hours a year). The weather load profile of the
building in Figure 1 illustrates that the proportion of the inter-
nal load could be identified from the weather-dependent load.
These two load components could be represented by a step-
wise regression line, of which the steeper segment had a high
coefficient of determination of 0.83.
The internal load varied with a building load ratio (BLR) of
0.05 to 0.164, and was likely to be separate from the weather-
dependent load when the outdoor temperature was below
18.4°C (65.12°F). This internal load constituted the whole
building cooling load when the enthalpy of outdoor air was
below 48 kJ/kg (20.64 Btu/lb), which corresponded to the en-
thalpy of indoor air based on the thermal conditions (24°C
[75.2°F] dry-bulb temperature and 50% relative humidity)
specified for air-conditioned areas in the building.
In this situation, it is possible to stage off chillers and to
apply free, or economizer, cooling, which means using out-
door air instead of using chilled water to provide cooling to
indoor areas. If free cooling was considered for this weather-
load profile, the annual building cooling energy could drop by
457 MWh (130 × 103 ton-hours) from 7424 MWh (2,111 × 103
ton-hours).
As Figure 2 illustrates, if the chiller plant was designed to
meet all building loads year-round, the building load ratio (BLR)
would be less than 0.5 for approximately 60% of the total op-
erating hours. In addition to this, the peak load range (a BLR
of 0.9 to 1) would account for only 0.3% of the total operating
time. If the benefits of free cooling were taken into account,
the operating period of the chiller plants would be shortened
from 3,085 to 2,162 hours for the generic office building. Un-
der this scenario, most of the building load ratios ranging from
0.05 to 0.16 could be disregarded. This would enable the per-
centage of total operating hours, in which the building load
ratio was below 0.5, to drop from 59.9% to 47.5% for the of-
fice building. Furthermore, chillers could operate more fre-
quently at higher loads.
Schedule of staging chillers and their load profiles. Fig-
ure 4 shows how chillers were staged to implement chiller
ASHRAE Journal 53
 Option OP1 OP2 OP3 OP4
1.0
Total Cooling Internal Load
6796 6478 6472 6585

Building Load Ratio

Capacity, kW Weather Dependent Load
(tons) (1,933) (1,843) (1,841) (1,873) 0.8
Total Number of
6 8 6 6
Chillers
0.6
Number of
Chillers for Each 6 8 4 2 2 2 2
Capacity
0.4
Nominal Cooling
Capacity, kW 1133 810 1213 810 1350 1133 810
(tons) (322) (230) (345) (230) (384) (322) (230)
0.2
Full Load
Efficiency,
3.1 3.1 3.1 3.1 3.1 3.1 3.1 0.0
Coefficient of
(1.13) (1.13) (1.13) (1.13) (1.13) (1.13) (1.13) 10°C 15°C 20°C 25°C 30°C 35°C
Performance
Outdoor Temperature
(kW/ton)

Table 1: Number and size of chillers for options OP1 to OP4. Figure 1: Weather load profile.

25 3
Building Load Ratio < 0.5 for 59.9% Outdoor

Chiller Efficiency (kW/ton)

Total Operating Hours, %

Of Total Operating Hours Temperature

20 35°C
30°C
2 25°C
15
20°C
15°C
10
1
5

0
<0.1 0.1– 0.2– 0.3– 0.4– 0.5– 0.6– 0.7– 0.8– 0.9– 0
0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
Building Load Ratio Chiller Part-Load Ratio

Figure 2: Load frequency profile. Figure 3: Chiller part-load performance curves.

sequencing when the building load ratio reached a certain
level. The number inside each column in the figures indi-
cates the number of staged chillers with a given nominal ca-
pacity. Under options OP1 and OP2, the chilled water plant
contained equally sized chillers, and one more chiller would
be staged when the building load exceeded the total capacity
of the staged chillers. Based on this, the step of total cooling
capacity corresponded to the total number of chillers installed.
More steps meant that there was more chance the chillers
were operating with maximum efficiency at full load to meet
various building cooling loads. OP3 and OP4 presented the
opportunity to use unequally sized chillers in the chiller plant
to allow the chillers to operate more frequently at full load.
With regard to OP3, where the air-cooled chiller plant con-
tained four large and two small chillers, 14 steps of total cool-
ing capacity existed. When six chillers in OP4 were split into
three different capacities, the number of steps of total cool-
ing capacity further increased to 26.
This study assessed the distribution of chiller load frequency
as represented by a percentage of total operating hours at dif-
ferent ranges of chiller part-load ratios. Figure 5 shows that six
identical chillers under OP1 operated at the full-load range (a
part-load ratio of 0.9 to 1) for 26.1% of total operating hours.
For OP2 where the number of identical chillers increased to
54 ASHRAE Journal
eight, the total operating hours within the full-load range rose
slightly to 36.6%. For OP3 and OP4 where the chilled water
plant contained six chillers with two or three different capaci-
ties respectively, the full load range constituted 63.6% or 72.8%
of total operating hours, respectively.
Based on the schedules of staging chillers at different build-
ing load ratios and on the weather-load profiles of the office
building, it was possible to establish the weather-load profiles
of chillers for different options (Figure 6). These profiles in-
cluded all combinations of chiller loads and outdoor tempera-
tures for determining the annual power consumption of the
chillers. Figure 6 illustrates that with chiller sequencing, all
the chillers operated at a part-load ratio of at least 0.3. If free
cooling was applied, the lowest part-load ratio rose to 0.4 or
even higher. There was a wide range of outdoor temperatures
(18.4°C to 33.7°C [65.1°F to 92.7°F] for OP1; 13.9°C to 33.7°C
[57°F to 92.7°F] for OP2 to OP4) at which the chillers oper-
ated near full load with a part load ratio of 0.9 to 1. Given that
different options provided different steps of total cooling ca-
pacity, the chillers could operate at a higher part-load ratio for
more of the time for a given outdoor temperature when the
number of steps of total cooling capacity increased. When the
outdoor temperature increased, the part-load ratio of the chill-
ers rose while its extent of variation tended to decrease. Very
ashrae.org August 2004
 Option OP1 Option OP2
Total Cooling Capacity, kW

Total Cooling Capacity, kW

6,000 6,000
Chiller Nominal Chiller Nominal
Capacity, kW Capacity, kW
1123.6 809.8
4,000 4,000
6 8
5 7
4 6
2,000 2,000 5
3 4
2 3
2
1 1
0 0
0.18 0.35 0.53 0.70 0.88 1.00 0.13 0.25 0.38 0.51 0.63 0.76 0.89 1.00
1 2 Building
3 Load4 Ratio 5 6 1 2 3 Building
4 Load5 Ratio 6 7 8

Option OP3
Total Cooling Capacity, kW

6,000 Chiller Nominal

Capacity, kW
1213
809.8
4,000
4
3 4
2
2,000 1 3 4
2 3
1
2
2 2 2 2 2
0 1 1 1 1 1 1
0.13 0.19 0.25 0.32 0.38 0.44 0.51 0.57 0.63 0.70 0.76 0.82 0.89 1.00
Building Load Ratio

Option OP4
Total Cooling Capacity, kW

6,000 Chiller Nominal

Capacity, kW
1350 2
1107.1 1 2
800.6 2
4,000
1 2
1
2
1 2 2
1 2 2
1 2
1 2 1 1
2 2 2
2,000 1
1 1 2 1 1
2 2 2
1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1
0.13 0.17 0.21 0.25 0.30 0.34 0.35 0.38 0.42 0.42 0.46 0.47 0.51 0.55 0.56 0.60 0.60 0.64 0.67 0.68 0.72 0.77 0.81 0.85 0.89 1.00
Building Load Ratio

Figure 4: Schedule of staging chillers at different options (OP1 to OP4).

few chiller load data in terms of part-load ratios corresponded consumption of the chillers in kWh over the annual total build-
to the regression line of the ARI condition given by the ARI ing cooling energy in kWh (or ton-hours). The normalized
Standard 5904 that relates chiller part-load ratios ranging from annual electricity use of chillers is the annual electricity con-
1 to 0.33 with decreasing outdoor temperatures ranging from sumption in kWh per unit floor area of the building in square
35°C to 12.5°C (95°F to 54.5°F). meters. The annual electricity consumption of the chillers could
Annual energy consumption of chillers with different be reduced by 9.2% when the number of steps of total cooling
options. After identifying the weather load profiles and the capacity increased from six to 26.
schedules of their staging, it was possible to calculate how much Pump energy was not considered in this analysis. However,
electricity would be consumed by chillers in the alternative if the pumping system is assumed to be primary-secondary
options of air-cooled chiller plants. Table 2 summarizes the (P-S), then running chillers at or near full load minimizes the
seasonal efficiency of the chillers and their annual electricity pumping energy. This is because in a P-S system, any time the
consumption for each option. chiller is operating, the pump also must run. Since the pump is
Seasonal chiller efficiency means the annual total electricity a constant speed device and assuming pumping efficiency is
August 2004 ASHRAE Journal 55
constant for each pump selection, the pump’s energy consump- 80
tion is constant—regardless of the chiller load. Therefore, if Design

Total Operating Hours, %

primary pumping energy also is considered, the benefits of en- Options
60 OP1
ergy savings are even larger when the number of steps of total OP2
cooling capacity increases. OP3
40 OP4
Strategies for implementing chiller sequencing. When a
chiller plant contains equally sized chillers, the implementation
of chiller sequencing is straightforward and based entirely on 20
the load conditions of individual chillers. This is because one
more chiller needs to be staged as long as each staged chiller 0
operates at above full load. One of the staged chillers can be 0.3–0.4 0.4–0.5 0.5–0.6 0.6–0.7 0.7–0.8 0.8–0.9 0.9–1.0
Chiller Part-Load Ratio
switched off when their part-load ratio drops to below (Nch – 1)/
Nch , where Nch is the number of staged chillers. If, for example, Figure 5: Load frequency profile of chillers.
six chillers are operating, when their part-load ratio falls to be-
Option OP1 OP2 OP3 OP4
low 0.83 (i.e., 5/6), one of the chillers can be staged off. To suc-
Seasonal Chiller Efficiency, 0.34 0.32 0.31 0.31
cessfully implement chiller sequencing, it is essential to evaluate kWh/kWh (kWh/ton-hour) (1.20) (1.23) (1.09) (1.09)
the part-load ratio of each chiller. This evaluation involves mea- Normalized Annual
suring the flow and temperature of chilled water. On the other Electricity Use of Chillers, 59.34 55.68 53.95 53.91
kWh/m2
hand, if identically sized chillers in a P-S pumping system are
Percentage of Electricity — 6.2% 9.1% 9.2%
balanced to carry equal flows of chilled water, the chillers can Saving in Relation to OP1
be staged based simply on the system-mixed temperatures of Table 2: Seasonal efficiency and annual electricity use of
return chilled water and supply chilled water. chillers in the office building under different options.
When a chiller plant contains chillers of different sizes, it is
critical to determine building cooling load in addition to the reasonable that the total capacity of a chiller plant can be de-
load conditions of each chiller to successfully implement chiller signed for the peak cooling demand without additional spare
sequencing. It is impossible to simply switch these chillers on capacity. This design helps eliminate the chance of the plant
or off based on their load conditions, because they can be staged being oversized and meets ASHRAE’s recommendation that
in various combinations to meet the requirements of building any plant capacity should be sized to cope with the cooling
cooling load. More steps of total cooling capacity will bring demand for 97.5% of the total operating time.5
more sophisticated staging of chillers. Based on the schedule of staging chillers, we can determine
For example, with OP4, the number of staged chillers tended how much backup capacity idle chillers can provide in various
to oscillate across the entire range of building cooling loads. building load conditions. This analysis is useful in ascertain-
The increasing building cooling load cannot be met simply by ing whether additional chillers are required to provide a backup
staging more chillers because the sizes of these chillers strongly capacity for the peak demand, and how the idle chillers should
influence the extent to which their composite cooling capacity be arranged for routine maintenance.
can rise to match the building load. It is essential to provide a When the building cooling load drops, the backup capacity
detailed monitoring of the cooling capacity of individual chill- increases because more chillers are idle. With regard to OP1
ers of different sizes and of their combined cooling capacity. A and OP2 for the chiller plant with identically sized chillers,
building management system (BMS) is a prerequisite for fa- one extra chiller seems sufficient to provide a backup capacity
cilitating this monitoring. With a BMS, the schedule of staging for the peak demand because at least one chiller staged for the
unequally sized chillers can be programmed to automatically peak demand can be idle for more than 90.6% of total operat-
implement chiller sequencing. ing hours. This is true unless N+1 redundancy is required when
the chiller plant is satisfying a process cooling load—for ex-
Discussion and Conclusions ample, manufacturing semiconductors (N means the total num-
Considering that the cooling load of a building directly in- ber of chillers for the peak demand).
fluences how much energy chillers in a chiller plant consume, The load frequency varies irregularly across the entire range
it is essential to understand how the building cooling load var- of building load ratios. This depends on how accurately the
ies at different times of day and different days of the year. This cooling capacity given by the staged chillers matches the build-
variation can be represented by a load-frequency profile and a ing cooling load. In the presence of free (economizer) cooling,
weather-load profile. the annual building load that the chillers handled decreased by
Based on the load-frequency profile of a generic office build- 6.2% and their operating period shortened by 29.9%.
ing, the peak load range (a building load ratio of 0.9 to 1) ac- It is important to use the load-frequency profile of chillers
counts for less than 0.3% of the total operating time. It is to assess how many hours the chillers operate at a part-load
56 ASHRAE Journal ashrae.org August 2004
 Option OPI Option OP2
1.0 1.0

0.8 0.8
Chiller Part-Load Ratio

Chiller Part-Load Ratio

0.6 0.6
ARI Condition ARI Condition

0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2
Internal Load Internal Load
Weather Dependent Load Weather Dependent Load
0.0 0.0
10°C 15°C 20°C 25°C 30°C 35°C 10°C 15°C 20°C 25°C 30°C 35°C
Outdoor Temperature Outdoor Temperature

Option OP3 Option OP4

1.0 1.0

0.8 0.8
Chiller Part-Load Ratio
Chiller Part-Load Ratio

0.6 0.6
ARI Condition ARI Condition

0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2
Internal Load Internal Load
Weather Dependent Load Weather Dependent Load
0.0 0.0
10°C 15°C 20°C 25°C 30°C 35°C 10°C 15°C 20°C 25°C 30°C 35°C
Outdoor Temperature Outdoor Temperature

Figure 6: Weather load profiles of chillers at different options (OP1 to OP4).

ratio of 0.9 to 1. The length of this operating period depends
on the number of steps of total cooling capacity. Figure 5
shows that at least 10 steps of total cooling capacity could
enable chillers to operate near full load for more than 50% of
total operating hours. With 26 steps, this percentage of total
operating hours increased to 72.8%, and the weather-load pro-
file of the chillers indicated that there was a wide range of
outdoor temperatures when the chillers were operating near
full load.
Considering that very few chiller load data correspond to
the condition given by ARI Standard 590, it is inadequate to
use the ARI part-load condition (IPLV or NPLV) alone to
describe the operating conditions of chillers and to specify
chiller efficiency. Chillers generally operate at part load with
various outdoor temperatures.6
When the number of steps of total cooling capacity increases
from six to 26, the annual electricity consumption of chillers
could be reduced by 9.2%. The benefits of energy savings
can be larger if chillers use primary pumping energy. Un-
equally sized chillers can be put into effect to enable them to
operate with high efficiencies and to lower overall electricity
consumption. It remains to be seen how overall engineering
economics (i.e., life-cycle cost analysis) can help determine
if the energy savings are worth the increased capital and main-
tenance costs for multiple chillers of different sizes.
Acknowledgments
The work described in this paper was supported by a grant
from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong SAR,
China (Project No. PolyU 5018/00E) and the central research
grant of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
References
1. Chan, K.T. and F.W. Yu. 2002. “Part load efficiency of air-cooled
multiple-chiller plant.” Building Services Engineering Research &
Technology 23(1):29–39.
2. Solar Energy Laboratory. 2000. TRNSYS: A transient system simu-
lation program (reference manual). Madison, Wis.: University of
Wisconsin-Madison Press.
3. Chan, K.T. and F.W. Yu. 2004. “Optimum set point of condens-
ing temperature for air-cooled chillers.” International Journal of
HVAC&R Research 10(2):113–127.
4. Air-conditioning and Refrigeration Institute. 1998. ARI Standard
550/590, Water chilling packages using the vapor compression cycle.
5. 2001 ASHRAE Handbook—Fundamentals (SI ed.), chap. 24.
6. Landman, W.J. 1996. “Off-design chiller performance.” Trane
Engineers Newsletter, 25(5). www.trane.com/commercial/library/
vol255/25-05pdf.pdf.

August 2004 ASHRAE Journal 57