A comprehensive monitoring suite was installed at a large convention hotel located in San Francisco, CA. The instrumentation was used for a research project to evaluate the effectiveness of electricity price based controls that automate response to real time pricing and to characterize the operation and performance of the hotel's chilled water plant that included a newly installed ice cool storage system. The hotel operates under real-time electricity rates.

To date, over four years of data have been collected. Data included electricity use for all chillers, secondary coolant, chilled water, condenser pumps, and the cooling tower fans. Thermal flow data were also collected for the storage system, ice chiller, direct cooling chillers, and chilled water load loops.

This paper (1) describes the chilled water plant, (2) defines the performance measurement objectives for the project, (3) discusses our operational experience with the plant, focusing on the cool storage system, (4) analyzes chilled water plant and cool storage system operation by examining the charge/discharge heat flow data, and (5) evaluates how well the plant as a whole and the cool storage system specifically met cooling loads of the facility, and how this affected their use.

Units: I-P