VRF The Chiller Killer! or are they?
Holden Shamburger
Chiller Training
2 minute read
Quite a few people have thought VRF would replace the chiller market.
The Chiller Killer!
Well, in reality it has dominated the RTU and traditional split system market.
Have chillers been unscathed by the VRF takeover?
No, the small end of systems, I'd say less than 200 tons, has felt it's impact.
But truthfully a VRF, done properly, was a better fit for most of those applications.
It's sad to this day I have to add "done properly" to the discussion around this stuff.
Because done poorly and oh man watch out.......
Here's the thing. VRF can not scale to the size of our chiller systems.
Chillers were never threatened by these systems.
Does the introduction of VRF chillers as a hydronic system continue to push on the chiller market?
Yes but at that point it's technically a chiller anyway.
Then we can argue about the true definition of a VRF and blah blah blah...
I can see the VRF chillers challenging systems as large as 500 tons with multiple banks working together.
I have a hard time seeing them swing above that.
MTT
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