Case Study: University of Ottawa achieves major energy savings with Trane Commercial chiller upgrades

University of Ottawa - Customer Case Study

The University of Ottawa needed to upgrade the chiller serving Roger Guindon Hall, a 600,000-square-foot research facility, because the existing R-11 refrigerant system had to be phased out. At the same time, the university wanted to improve chiller plant efficiency and reduce energy use without disrupting critical medical research. Trane Commercial was selected to help evaluate and replace the aging system with a modern Trane CenTraVac™ chiller solution.

Trane Commercial installed a new 1000-ton CenTraVac centrifugal chiller, integrated it with existing heat recovery chillers, and optimized operations with variable-speed pumping and critical sequencing. The project delivered annual savings of $166,500 in cooling costs and $120,000 in heating costs, plus 950,000 kWh in energy savings from equipment changes and another 750,000 kWh from pumping optimization. Trane Commercial also helped reduce the building peak demand by 500 kW, earning the university a $275,000 OPA incentive, along with $45,000 in maintenance avoidance and 333,000 kg of CO2 emissions avoided.

University of Ottawa

Pierre DeGagné

Assistant Director Engineering and Campus Sustainability