Page 32 - Climate Control News Magazine April 2021

Poor maintenance, faulty installations
a costly drain on business
FAULTY INSTALLATION PRACTICES AND A LACK OF MAINTENANCE ARE THE TWO BIGGEST CONTRIBUTORS TO POOR SYSTEM PERFORMANCE IN REFRIGERATION AND AIR CONDITIONING EQUIPMENT.
ABOVE: There are more than 50 million individual pieces of RAC equipment in use in Australia.
THESE ARE THE findings of the Leaks, Maintenance and Emissions report re- leased by the Department of Agricul- ture, Water and the Environment last month.
This report explores opportunities to reduce emissions from refrigerant leaks and unneces- sary electricity consumption.
In most modern economies refrigeration and air conditioning equipment is one of the largest, if not the single largest consumer of electricity.
The implications of the fact that cooling ser- vices are consuming more than a fifth of all the electricity generated in Australia is still not widely appreciated.
Electricity production is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the Aus- tralian economy, producing 34 per cent of all emissions in the year ending December 2019.
The International Institute of Refrigeration (IOR) provided a global estimate that ‘Better op- timisation, monitoring, and maintenance of cooling equipment has the potential to save 30 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2e emissions by 2050, con- tributing a further 38 per cent of savings on those delivered through the planned phase down of high GWP refrigerants agreed at Kigali’.
The IOR estimates optimisation, monitoring and maintenance can reduce total greenhouse gas emissions by 13 per cent.
With more than 50 million individual pieces of RAC equipment employed in the Australian economy, the report provides industry with op- portunities to really make a difference.
Most prevalent faults across all RAC equip- ment are:
• Sub-optimal refrigerant charge (undercharge most common);
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