Education
LACCD Southwest College Thermal Storage Plant Controls
Thermal storage plant controls integration at a community college campus.
Client
Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD)
Location
Los Angeles, CA
Service Line
The building automation behind a thermal-storage central plant — the sequences that turn ice into off-peak savings.
Client: Los Angeles Community College District (LA Southwest College)
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Service Line: Building Automation — Controls & Sequences of Operation
The plant is the hardware. The sequences are what make it smart.
When the Los Angeles Southwest College campus got a new central plant, Athena provided the building automation that runs it — the controls and the full sequences of operation behind the cooling and heating for the whole site. The plant is the hardware; the sequences are what make it smart.
The cooling side uses thermal storage, and the savings live in the controls. We sequenced two air-cooled chillers to spend the night making ice, when power is cheaper and the cooler night air lets them run more efficiently. During the day, our sequences draw on that stored ice to cool the campus, so it carries its peak load without firing chillers when demand and rates are highest. The strategy only works if the logic is right: make the cooling when it’s cheap, spend it when it counts.
Make the cooling when it’s cheap. Spend it when it counts.
On the heating side, we sequenced six boilers to share the load. Instead of driving one boiler to full output, the sequence runs several at lower capacity, which is easier on the equipment and lighter on energy when the campus calls for heat.
Moving that media across a campus is a controls problem too. We set the variable-speed pumps to deliver only the flow the campus needs, with differential pressure sensed at remote points to tell the system where demand is. At each building, a polling routine reads the air handlers and VAV boxes to gauge real-time demand, so the plant answers what the buildings are actually asking for rather than guessing. The result is a plant that shifts its load off-peak and runs only as hard as the day requires.
Client: Los Angeles Community College District (LA Southwest College). Scope: Building automation and the full sequences of operation for the campus central plant (plant construction by others).
Related LACCD work: LACCD Southwest College – School of Career & Technical Education.
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