Belk “Chills” with Shultz Engineering Group and Saves Big

Belk Case Study

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When Belk needed a changeout of their central chiller plant at their headquarters building on Tyvola Road in
Charlotte, rather than call several contractors and solicit quotations for this replacement, we contacted Shultz
Engineering Group (SEG), a long-time trusted engineering partner of ours, to advise us how to best approach
this project. Their engineering expertise and advice allowed us to far surpass our expectations for such a
project.

First, SEG ran cooling loads for the entire building served by the existing chiller plant and examined our past
usage history. They determined that our three existing 500-ton chillers could be replaced with three 400-ton
chillers. This significantly reduced our project’s first cost, not only on the chillers themselves but on the
accompanying smaller cooling tower, pumps, and electrical service. This resulted in first cost savings in the
range of $300,000.

Next, SEG created an energy model for our entire facility, tuned to our actual historical energy usage, which
determined that we would experience very significant energy savings by going with a new piping configuration
and controls strategy. Using this same energy model, they were able to demonstrate to the IRS that the
proposed replacement chiller plant would provide a 15 to 24% improvement over the baseline chiller code
minimum plant. They then successfully achieved tax deductions of more than $170,000 for us on this project.
Through their energy model demonstration and consultation with Duke Energy, SEG was also able to
demonstrate projections of significant energy usage reductions to Duke Energy and secured a Custom Utility
Incentive for us of over $200,000.

Since the completion of this chiller plant project, the system has performed much more reliably than our
original system and has amazingly been saving us an average of more than $10,000 per month in energy costs.
SEG saved Belk approximately $670,000 in initial costs and is on track to continue to save $120,000 per year
going forward.

-Belk Facilities Department
Belk, Facilities
2801 West Tyvola Road
Charlotte, NC 28217