SI-WX-0209

New Release
File In/With: N/A
Issue Date 2-Apr-11

Equipment Affected: All YK Chillers with VGD

Service Information Subject: Cause Analysis & Adjustment Means of

Leaving Chilled Water Temperature Fluctuation and
Hunting

Background:
Recently, it is reported from field that such a phenomenon of temperature, current or condenser
liquid level fluctuating and hunting as follows often occurs to some YK chillers which are equipped
with VGD. It is embodied as:
1. When the chiller is running at partial load, its leaving chilled water temperature is unable to
get stable. Even though enter chilled water temperature fluctuates very little, the fluctuation of
℃
the leaving water temperature is still over 0.4 .
2. Meanwhile, current, PRV position and condenser liquid level, etc. also show large amplitude
of fluctuation.
3. It lasts a long time. The fluctuation still cannot be stabilized after several hours even several
days. A status of fluctuation is shown as figure 1.

Fig. 1

YORK (Wuxi) Air Conditioning & Refrigeration co., Ltd. 1

Equipments Affected:
All YK chillers with VGD

Causes of Failure:
As per our analysis based on the control curves that were captured at job sites, we think that this
is because PRV first react and on many occasions VGD also begins to act soon when the external
load of the chiller changes. As PRV and VGD generally act in reverse directions when controlling
water temperature, the PRV turns out to have large amplitude of position change insensibly. If we
want to avoid the PRV from acting in a too large scale, we must reduce the amplitude in which the
VGD moves each time.

Solutions:
On the VGD setpoints screen in control panel, decreasing the difference between “HIGH LIMIT”
and “LOW LIMIT” can reduce the amplitude of each time’s VGD action. So, we can make the setting
in the following ways:
■ Under default conditions, “HIGH LIMIT” is 0.8 and “LOW LIMIT” is 0.6. Their difference is:
0.8-0.6=0.2. If to decrease the difference, we can set the “HIGH LIMIT” as 0.8 and “LOW LIMIT” as
0.7. Thus, the amplitude of each time’s VGD action will be reduced.
■ If we hope to further reduce the times of VGD action, we can try to set “HIGH LIMIT” as 1.0
and “LOW LIMIT” as 0.8.
■ At the same time, we can change “PRV OFFSET” into “0” to decrease the amount of PRV
position changes during STALL Waiting State.
Please refer to figures 2 and 3.

YORK (Wuxi) Air Conditioning & Refrigeration co., Ltd. 2

 Fig. 2

Fig. 3

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Figure 4 shows that the fluctuation was improved or controlled by changing the VGD settings.

Fig. 4

Therefore, we can see that the default VGD setpoints are not necessarily suitable for all working
conditions. They need to be adjusted somewhat appropriately. Besides, sometimes, a chiller with
VGD may have an obviously insufficient capacity during starting process. Even when its current has
reached 100%FLA, its capacity remains obviously insufficient. This is also because the VGD
setpoints fail to be set well. It is most possible that the VGD has already acted during the starting
process. We can set “PRV-VGD Inhibit” downward from the default value 95%. The minimum may be
40%. This is especially recommended for those chillers whose PRV position is relatively low at full
load.

YORK (Wuxi) Air Conditioning & Refrigeration co., Ltd. 4