Life cycle costs comparison of VRF units

asked 2019-12-06 05:49:33 -0600

kaczjer
183 ●4

updated 2019-12-06 10:28:34 -0600

MatthewSteen

10147 ●19 ●26 https://www.nrel.gov/b...

Hi Everyone! I we prepare advisory analysis for HVAC project design in Poland. Our goal is to reduce LCC of HVAC components. We use Carrier HAP and IES.

The thing that we want to analyse is a comparison of VRF units by different providers. As example Provider A is more expencive than Provider B. Looking for ESEER, EER or COP factors Provider A is sometimes also worse. So based on such fact Provider B is reasonable solution, but based on already installed equipments the result is opposite because such factors do not show whole year operation. We want to prepare LCC analysis that can precisely compare VRF A and VRF B. The question is what data we need to obtain from providers and which software we need to use. Investment cost are of course not a problem. Additional costs as maintenance is hard to estimate and we skip them. We only want to compare energy use. Many thanks in advance!

answered 2019-12-06 09:56:19 -0600

Luis Lara

2083 ●1 ●16 ●12 https://www.linkedin.c...

updated 2019-12-06 10:23:45 -0600

I would recommend you to take a look at the US National Insitute of Standards and Technology Handbook 135. It explains in detail the methodology to do a Life Cycle Cost Analysis.

It looks like you want to only compare the Operational cost of the two different systems. In that regard, it does not matter which software you use to estimate your energy consumption; you should use the one where you feel the most confident you are doing a correct simulation.

Nevertheless, I will recommend EnergyPlus because it has a baked-in routine to Life-Cycle Cost Analysis.

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Many thanks, The question is what parameters of VRV units should I use for comparisons. In my opinion nominal parameters such as EER, COP are not sufficient.

kaczjer ( 2019-12-18 04:41:32 -0600 )edit

If you want to better estimate the operational cost, you should look into using EnergyPlus and developing your own performance curves for the equipment you are comparing. There are posts in this forum that go into how to develop VRF performance curves. Also this is a very good reference http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/en/publicatio...