ASHRAE Journal - July 2019 - 40

2019

ASHRAE TECHNOLOGY AWARD CASE STUDIES

PHOTO 1 New optimally sized chillers provide increased ease of operation across the entire cooling load range.

PHOTO 2 The new cooling towers store 99% less water than the original model, leading to much
quicker maintenance due to shorter drain time.

The Olympic Park also houses numerous administrative spaces for sports federations, ofﬁces for over 1,200
employees of a ﬁnancial cooperative in the Montreal
Tower and a recently modernized sports center for
Canada's top athletes and the general public.

* Uninterrupted service: fully operational venues
throughout project implementation.
In the request for proposals, the Olympic Park speciﬁed that certain parameters, including annual energy
savings and overall project costs, needed to be contractually guaranteed by the design-build ﬁrm. This ensured
the Olympic Park would achieve its goals while being
protected from cost overruns, and set the stage for a collaborative relationship with the selected design-build
ﬁrm, which had every interest in reaching the Olympic
Park's ambitious targets.

Multiple Outcomes

Faced with operational and maintenance challenges
due to aging equipment, the Olympic Park required
signiﬁcant asset renewal for their district heating and
cooling networks, in addition to ventilation system
improvements.
An integrated deep retroﬁt with whole-systems redesign brought opportunities to achieve meaningful outcomes that went far beyond equipment replacement.
The Olympic Park launched a request for proposals
using a performance contracting approach. Aside from a
few pieces of equipment that were mandatory to replace,
the outcome-based request for proposals focused completely on the ﬁnancial, operational and environmental
results to be delivered, without a set of predetermined
technical measures to follow. The Olympic Park selected
a design-build ﬁrm that could address their multiple
goals in a single project:
* Sustainability: signiﬁcant decrease in energy use
and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions;
* Cost-effective asset renewal: largely funded with
energy savings and subsidies;
* Simpliﬁed building management: improved operability and ease of maintenance;
* Quick implementation: shorter timeline via a single
project with a design-build ﬁrm;
* Improved user experience: better comfort, air quality and lighting; and

40

ASHRAE JOURNAL

ashrae.org

J U LY 2 0 19

Key Measures
District Heating and Cooling Upgrades
The Olympic Park's district heating and cooling networks were upgraded through a deep retroﬁt that
included a completely redesigned chilled water plant, a
steam to hot water conversion of the heating system and
extensive heat recovery.
Energy consumption was drastically reduced by redesigning these systems to work in synergy. The integrated
nature of the project also allowed for optimal sizing of
the new chillers, cooling towers, and other components,
signiﬁcantly improving overall efﬁciency.
Chilled water network optimization. Four new
chillers (Photo 1), carefully sized for efﬁciency
over a wide range of loads and totaling 5,250 tons
(18 463 kW) of cooling, replaced the original chillers,
which had amounted to 6,737 tons (23 693 kW). The
original wooden cooling tower, dating from 1976, was
replaced by six separate units with VFD fans, allowing
maximum ﬂexibility of operation (Photo 2). The total
fan power declined from 375 hp to 180 hp (280 kW to
134 kW).
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ASHRAE Journal - July 2019

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