The popular adage “A penny saved is a penny earned,” is most often attributed to Benjamin Franklin. According to The Franklin Institute, however, the founding father and inventor never actually made that statement. When he penned Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1737, he did write, “A penny saved is twopence clear.”
Franklin was saying that it takes a penny to clear a penny in debt and another penny to get ahead. In today’s economic environment, finding ways to save money has never been more important. That’s especially true when it comes to choosing and installing cooling towers. Whether it’s a petroleum refinery, metals manufacturing plant or data center run by Google, these processes create heat. A conventional cooling tower uses water to transfer that heat into the atmosphere.
When counting the cost of cooling tower ownership, it’s important to consider capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expenses (OPEX) and how the two can affect equipment purchases. The first generally refers to a company’s fixed assets such as machinery, building improvements or computers, while the latter is defined by the costs associated with a company’s day-to-day operations. The initial purchase and installation of a cooling tower system is a fraction of the cost to operate that tower over its useful life. Water purchase and disposal, pump energy, fan energy, drift loss, chemical treatment, and tower maintenance [OPEX] will typically cost more than the upfront CAPEX cost during the first four years of operation.
Traditional cooling towers generate tremendous transmission efficiency losses and are costly to operate from a maintenance perspective. They also consume large amounts of kilowatts. Tower Tech cooling systems not only provide companies with a sustainable footprint but generate cost savings on a number of levels. Design is a key contributor. The company’s forced-draft, counter-flow, bottom-mounted matrix is made up of multiple fans. These fans supply reliable thermal performance in both constant and variable heat load applications. This design also guarantees owners zero downtime. If one fan fails, the unit’s other fans continue to operate the tower minimizing thermal impact. In as little as an hour, the dysfunctional fan can be locked out, tagged out and replaced while the other fans continue to operate.
Tower Tech’s ability to factory assemble its cooling towers with a pre-engineered, certified substructure, lowers infrastructure costs and reduces the unit’s space and weight requirements. The modular design allows multiple towers to be linked to accommodate a customer’s cooling requirements. Tower Tech’s Quick-Install features mean installation can be performed in as little as 30 minutes per tower. That means less cost for customers in terms of heavy equipment and labor.
The next few blogs will shed some light on other factors that contribute to cost savings such as drift emission rate, motor design, and how the Tower Tech system reduces energy consumption for utilities like HVAC. Click here for a comparison of Tower Tech cooling towers with other products on the market or calculate savings with this online tool. Contact us today about your cooling needs.