Providing energy-efficient, quiet and affordable HVAC equipment for an 11-story, 176,000-square-foot office building in the heart of San Antonio, Texas certainly has its challenges. But, add to that the need to change out the chillers in a fully-occupied space without any service outages, and the engineering team of Goetting & Associates immediately tapped HTS Texas for the job.
Working closely with general contractor, Beck, and mechanical contractor, T.D. Industries, HTS Texas aimed to replace the equipment without the use of temporary air-cooled chillers that can cause objectionable noise and space problems. While the task called for magnetic bearing compressors, the project team that approached HTS Texas was unfamiliar with this technology.

Prior to the equipment’s installation, the HTS Texas team met with the project’s collaborators to introduce the product and answer questions regarding the benefits and reliability of the technology. Following the meeting, HTS provided two 250-ton McQuay Magnitude WMC chillers. By securing separate price break-outs for each manufacturer and chiller type, HTS Texas clearly presented the true cost of ownership to the client. AT&T chose to forego the lowest upfront-cost option and instead selected the higher-energy efficiency and quieter operation of the McQuay Magnitude WMC Series chillers.

As a result of this decision, AT&T saved approximately 496,000 kilowatts per hour after the equipment’s first year of operation. These units also required less annual maintenance over the previous R-123 chillers that required oil lubrication. And, as an added benefit, this option eliminated all chiller noise complaints.