HPAC Engineering Editorial Advisory Board member Michael K. West, PhD, PE, building-systems scientist, (above, right) and Richard Combes, PhD, PE, energy-efficiency engineer, of AdvanTek Inc., Melbourne, Fla.-based consulting firm specializing in facility performance, systems engineering, and resource efficiency, recently received the 2013 Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) Energy and Water Project of the Year Award from the U.S. Department of Defense.
As part of an ESTCP-funded study of low-cost technologies for improving the energy efficiency of roof- or ground-mounted heating and air-conditioning systems for buildings of less than 100,000 sq ft, West and Combes evaluated AdvanTek’s ClimaStat at two military installations.
ClimaStat is a refrigeration-science technology consisting of small devices with multiple sensors that regulate the pressure changes across a HVAC system. It can be field-retrofitted into existing HVAC equipment or installed in new equipment.
More than 90 sensors were used in the demonstrations. At Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in Beaufort, S.C., an efficiency improvement of 29 percent was demonstrated for the retrofit of an existing system. At Patrick Air Force Base in Brevard County, Fla., an efficiency improvement of 17 percent was demonstrated for a new system. The payback periods for the two scenarios are four years and three years, respectively.
Both of the installations have plans to install additional ClimaStat systems.
AdvanTek is demonstrating a companion microprocessor-based control technology called EER Optimizer at three military bases.
For more information on the demonstration and testing of ClimaStat, go to http://bit.ly/DoD_ClimaStat.