INNOVAL
The hot climate at Le Port led the team in charge of the INNOVAL project to prepare a cooling strategy for different seasons. During the winter, natural ventilation is sufficient to cool offices and during the mid-season between the winter and the summer, natural ventilation is completed with ceiling fans. However, during the summer, natural ventilation coupled with ceiling fans are not sufficient, consequently, air conditioning has to be used. In buildings in Reunion Island, a significant percentage of the energy consumed is due to air conditioning, therefore, the air conditioning system selected here is an efficient one with a Variable Refrigerant Flow ensuring reliability and energy savings. Moreover, a software tool automatically regulates the power of cooling in relation to office use. Finally, while in Reunion Island, people are used to cooling below 24 °C, the air conditioning of the building cannot cool below 26 °C which is adequate with ceiling fans and natural ventilation. Indeed, with the assistance of ceiling fans, the felt temperature is reduced by 5 °C allowing a final felt temperature of 21 to 22 °C. In order to optimize the refrigerated unit power, the temperature adjustment consists of applying a difference of 5 °C between the outside and the inside. For example, if the outside temperature is 34 °C, the temperature adjustment will be 29 °C. All these choices in operation have led to a decrease from 100 kW to 30 kW in the power required by the refrigerated unit.
Fan coil unit
Speed control of the fan motors within a fan coil unit is partly used to control the heating and cooling output desired from the unit. Some manufacturers accomplish speed control by adjusting the taps on an AC transformer supplying the power to the fan motor. Typically this would require adjustment at the commissioning stage of the building construction process and is therefore set for life at a fixed speed. Other manufacturers provide custom-wound Permanent Split Capacitor (PSC) motors with speed taps in the windings, set to the desired speed levels for the fan coil unit design. A simple speed selector switch (Off-High-Medium-Low) is provided for the local room occupant to control the fan speed. Typically this speed selector switch is integral to the room thermostat, and is set manually or is controlled automatically by the digital room thermostat. Building Energy Management Systems can be used for automatic fan speed and temperature control. Fan motors are typically AC Shaded Pole or Permanent Split Capacitor. More recent developments include brushless DC designs with electronic commutation. Compared to units with asynchronous 3-speed motors, the fan coil units with brushless motors will reduce the power consumption up to 70%.