Achievable facility water temperature
Legacy plant makes 6 °C water beautifully. Liquid cooling would rather have 30 °C.
What runs out
The facility water temperature the site can actually deliver to the CDUs, which sets the approach and therefore the usable duty.
The relation that governs it
A high-temperature loop at around 30 °C supply unlocks free cooling for most of a European year and widens nothing — the approach to a platform accepting 45 °C inlet stays comfortable. A 6 °C loop wastes that twice.
How to tell whether it binds in your hall
If your plant is designed around 6–10 °C supply and you are adding liquid cooling, the question is not whether the plant is big enough but whether it should be making water that cold at all.
What relieves it
A separate high-temperature loop, adiabatic assist, or a trim chiller sized for the hours the free cooling does not cover.
What that relief costs beyond money
Two loops means two sets of controls and a commissioning problem. Retaining the low-temperature loop for residual air load is usually unavoidable and is what caps the efficiency gain.
Indicative relief lead time
20–52 weeks
European retrofits. The schedule, not the capex, usually decides.
How we currently price this relief
E0
A placeholder with a −50%/+100% band, not a price. It is replaced by a quotation the first time we tender this relief on a real project.
The mistake we actually see
Treating water temperature as a plant setting rather than as the variable that decides both CDU duty and annual energy.
Basis
- — OCP Water-Based Transfer Fluids Guidelines, 2025.
These usually travel together
Does this one bind in your hall?
Seven numbers you already know, all thirteen constraints evaluated, and the one that stops you first named with its basis in engineering units. Free.