Elon University serves 7,000 students from a historic, 690-acre campus in central North Carolina. The university wanted to connect three independent chilled water systems that serve the Global Neighborhood, Mosely Center/Lakeside Dining Hall, and Inman Admission Building into one common system – the North Loop. The chilled water systems serving the Center for the Arts and Koury Athletic Center are planned to be incorporated into the North Loop in a future phase of work.
Precis was engaged to design an integrated chilled water system to enhance the flexibility of each building’s cooling systems by establishing a common loop to which each building can reject heat. The solution affords Elon ability to shut down power to a building or streamline maintenance to a chiller or tower without sacrificing cooling to the respective building. The combined system will decrease overall energy consumption by efficiently staging chillers on and off, adjusting pumping power, and resetting condenser water setpoints to meet demand.
Precis completed a laser scan of one of the more congested mechanical rooms to develop a 3D point cloud model and CAD files that capture existing conditions for clash detection and accuracy. Precis also designed the integration of new controls instrumentation with existing control systems for communication with a single front end. The design solution optimizes the central chilled water system to reduce energy consumption, improve flexibility, and increase redundancy. Phase 1 construction begins in 2025.