July 08, 2008

Halton's passive beams playing an important part in energy reward winning project

IKEA Store, Logan, QLD, Australia – Green Project of the year 2008
 
Together with our agent Air Solutions International Pty. Ltd. in Australia, Halton made a considerable contribution to this achievement by supplying passive chilled beams to this project. The passive chilled beams keep it cool in the IKEA showroom

"The award was given to Building Service Engineers who turned IKEA's goal to substantially reduce its energy consumption into impressive reality with BSE's work on the homewear giant's new store in Logan, south Brisbane.

BSE worked closely with IKEA to take a typically innovative approach to air conditioning the 30,000m2 outlet. The store's HVAC system incorporates a superb suite of solutions to reduce both energy consumption and costs, while ensuring optimal climate control and comfort for the more than 1 million shoppers that will pass through it every year. These measures include: high efficiency water-cooled chillers, overnight storage of chilled water, chilled beams, heat exchangers to recover heat from exhaust air to cool incoming air, fully integrated BMS control system and economy cycle operation. These steps are reliably estimated to reduce energy costs and consumption by a massive 50% compared to conventional air conditioning installation using air-cooled units.

The store's showroom and marketplace areas are cooled using passive chilled beams with fan coils for make-up air, while the expansive warehouse is cooled with conventional fan coil units.

Three Powerpax chillers, that use a third of the energy of conventional air-cooled chillers, power the cooling capacity. These operate at a co-efficient of performance (COP) of up to 12, compared with 3.5 for a conventional air-cooled chiller or 7 for a water-cooled chiller. At night one of the two 1100kW chillers for make up air is used to cool the 500,000 litre fire sprinkler water tank on site, which is then used to cool the chilled beams by day.

Rainwater, harvested from the roof, provides 55% of the water for the cooling towers - a saving of 10 million litres per annum.

The energy savings not only greatly help the environment, they significantly reduce the load of the local power supply that has struggled to keep up with demand of the high growth area.

The expected payback on investment of the chilled beams is eight years, for all the other HVAC components it's a lowly two years.

The award was based on the judges' view that the validated use of the innovative energy saving technologies showed a practical application in a substantial existing commercial building, applicable not only to IKEA but also transferable to similar types of retail outlets across the board."

Comments from the Operations Manager at IKEA Logan, Mr. Anders Ekstrand:
"The setup between IKEA and the AC service provider reduces the risk of malfunctions leading to decreased ability to trade as per normal. A great benefit to all inside the store is that the chilled beam system is very quiet with little to no noise pollution when running at capacity. We have been trading for approximately 19 months and have no doubts that a fully functional AC system can support the business and create a good climate in the store. 

We have also found that the chilled beam system is more energy efficient than conventional AC systems (using off peak power to chill water), which will reduce our operational costs compared with a conventional system in the same building.