Tue, 02/10/2015 - 09:54

BALTIMORE (Feb. 3, 2015) – On January 28, Danfoss hosted its 20th annual press briefing during the 2015 AHR Expo in Chicago. This year’s press briefing included discussions of four industry megatrends impacting the heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, and refrigeration (HVACR) industry, and showcased a successful retrofit project with a 3-month payback. Danfoss North America President John Galyen stated, “Danfoss is uniquely positioned to support our customers as the industry faces changing standards and regulations and moves toward low-GWP refrigerants and more energy efficient requirements.” He opened the briefing by discussing four megatrends impacting industry: an HFC phasedown, increasing utility peak loads, changing energy use in buildings, and a widening workforce gap. Mark Menzer, director of public affairs, discussed the path to achieving the next level of efficiency, which he suggested will come from a whole building system approach because industry is reaching a point of diminishing returns on the energy efficiency of discrete components. Menzer also highlighted the aggressive activity from the U.S. Department of Energy, including the 19 new energy efficiency rules it has planned in 2015, all of which focus on components instead of systems. Jeff Staub, application engineering manager, then underscored the importance of looking to energy efficiency through a whole building system approach by examining some of today’s existing technologies. This includes, he pointed out, variable speed, oil-free, magnetic bearing compressors like the Danfoss Turbocor VTT series, a recipient of the 2015 AHR Expo Innovation Award. However, Gaylen explained that many available high efficiency technologies, like variable speed, are under deployed, causing the changing energy use in buildings to be a challenge for the industry. Mike Schwartz, CEO of Daikin Applied Americas, elaborated, “Owners are commonly not aware of how their system is operating. In fact, over 70 percent of rooftop units are still not running properly.” Daikin Applied was the first to meet DOE’s Rooftop Energy Challenge with their Rebel product, which achieves an 84 percent energy savings above the ASHRAE 90.1 standard. If all 3- to 15-ton rooftop units installed in the U.S. were converted to the Rebel variable speed technology, the estimated annual energy savings would be greater than $5 billion or 55,000 gigawatt-hours (GWh)—enough to power over 5 million homes each year. “The demand for high efficiency equipment is increasing, including variable speed equipment that not only matches the load, but also can be tied to a smarter grid and respond to peak events,” Galyen noted during his discussion of the megatrends. “The focus is not only on new buildings and can’t be if we want to make a measurable impact. New buildings represent only one percent of the building stock.” Danfoss is a manufacturer of high-efficiency electronic and mechanical components and controls for air-conditioning, heating, refrigeration and motion systems.