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A standard preventive maintenance program includes:
– Maintaining equipment and systems in satisfactory operating condition by routine inspections, finding and correcting early failures before they occur or before they develop into major defects.
– Testing the system, verifying the operating requirements, calibration and parts replacements when scheduled or required as detailed by the manufacturer’s operating and maintenance manuals.
The following example describes how preventive maintenance affects energy efficiency:
We found the fins and coils on a cooling tower to be very dirty in one of our retrofit projects. When cooling tower coils and fins are dirty, the heat transfer is not efficient through the coils and fins and cooling tower fans will operate more to transfer the heat to ambient. This results in higher energy consumption and reduces fans’ life expectancy.
After cleaning the cooling tower coils and fins, the 30 HP cooling tower fan ran two hours less per day which resulted in a reduction in energy consumption of 4,921.6 KWh/year (equivalent to $ 467.55/year).
How to calculate:
Convert HP to KW 1HP (electric) = 0.7457 KW 30HP x (0.7457 KW/1HP)=22.37KW
In this example, the cooling tower was operated for 22 weeks/year, five days/week. Now that the cooling tower fan runs two hours less per day, the following reduction in energy consumption is realized:
Total Reduced Operating Hours per Year=(2 Hours/Day) x (5 Days/Week) x (22 weeks/year) = 220 Hours per Year
Total KWh = 22.37KW x 220 hours per year = 4,921.6 KWh per Year
If 1 KWh costs $0.095, the annual energy cost is:
4,921.6KWh x $0.095 = $467.66 per Year