Carrier chillers in 5-star hotel refurbishment

UK: The prestigious Biltmore Hotel in London’s Mayfair has been equipped with two Carrier AquaForce Vision chillers as part of a multi-million pound refurbishment.

The 5-star hotel on Grosvenor Square, formerly the Millennium Hotel, is currently undergoing a £60m redevelopment and will reopen shortly.

The Carrier AquaForce Vision chillers replaced two ageing chillers by another manufacturer that had reached the end of their working life, and were proving increasingly inefficient and unreliable. Carrier carried out the work on a full turnkey basis, managing all logistics associated with dismantling and removing the old machines and replacing them with the new Carrier chillers.

Challenges included limited space on the building’s rooftop to accommodate the new machines, and strict controls on noise levels due to the hotel’s high standards for guests and surrounding residential properties. There were also limitations on power which meant careful assessment of start-up and peak loads were required.

The AquaForce Vision chillers – with a combined cooling capacity of 1460kW – were installed within the limited 6.8m foot-print available. The work included installation of integrated hydronic modules linked to the chiller’s variable speed drives, chiller sequencing control and factory-fitted remote monitoring.

An energy usage simulation produced by Carrier highlighted that the building has a peak cooling load of 1400kW and a base load of 700kW, requiring the chillers to operate an average of 18 hours a day throughout the week. Using Carrier’s Chiller System Optimiser software program, the team calculated that the new installation would consume 20% less electrical power than the previous chillers, delivering savings of 345,079kWh of electricity.