Air-conditioning accounts for approximately 70% of landlord-controlled energy consumption in CapitaLand Investment’s (CLI) India business parks. When the chillers at Inventor Building at International Tech Park Bangalore (ITPB) were due for replacement, instead of direct chiller replacements for aging equipment, CLI explored the feasibility of interconnecting chilled water header pipes of a few chiller plant rooms in certain buildings within ITPB. 

Two clusters, comprising five buildings within ITPB, were found suitable for the implementation. Interconnection of chilled water header pipelines was implemented within each cluster. This converted the standalone chiller systems at the five buildings to two “district cooling network” within ITPB, hence achieving energy optimisation with about 2% improvement in energy consumption and a corresponding cost avoidance of about S$24,000. This also resulted in a cost avoidance of S$1.1 million from the estimated cost to replace old chillers, as well as avoidance of embodied carbon from lower equipment replacement requirements. There is also expected reduction in manpower and maintenance costs, from originally having to maintain standalone chiller systems at the five buildings, to two “district cooling network” with fewer chillers now. Owing to the success of the district cooling network, it was implemented in another cluster at ITPB comprising two buildings. This allowed additional energy optimisation which resulted in cost avoidance of S$16,000, bringing the overall annual energy savings to S$40,000.

The team is reviewing the feasibility of implementing this district cooling network to enhance energy efficiency at its other business parks.