Feasibility Study of Alternative Cooling Technologies

The team was asked to review alternative cooling technologies for office buildings and single-family homes in Phoenix, Arizona. The typical structures selected for study were a 50,000-square-foot office building and a 2,500-square-foot single-family residence. Alternative cooling technologies were compared with respect to their energy efficiency, installed cost, and energy cost savings based on a typical utility company electric rate. The baseline cooling system is a standard efficiency direct-expansion cooling unit. The analysis used realistic building models to obtain cooling loads for input into the financial model and a cooling load model for each building type.