Schaufler Academy’s Energy Concept Receives Deutscher TGA-Award

The award ceremony was held in CCI Berlin’s Ludwig Erhard building on April 12th during the Berliner ENERGIETAGE conference. The 16-member specialist jury for technical building services awarded the specialist team of planners commissioned by Bitzer for the Schaufler Academy’s progressive energy concept.

Klaus Rauer and Christian Bressel of the Rauer Planung engineering firm accepted the award. "We couldn’t be happier about the award. The Schaufler Academy can serve as an example to many other projects, as this involved some major energy challenges that had to be overcome both economically and practically," says Rauer.

Bitzer congratulated its project partners for the award. ‘We’ve always set great store by the efficiency of our compressors and condensing units. After all, lower energy consumption improves the environmental balance and reduces life cycle costs,’ says Dr Armin Walz, Head of Application Engineering at Bitzer. "True to this principle, Bitzer and its construction partners developed an energy concept that combines flexibility in terms of building utilization with the responsible use of resources and minimal energy consumption."

The Schaufler Academy building and the building technology concept were developed under the direction of the BFK Plan GmbH planning office with the support of the IB Rauer specialist planning office and the design architects of BFK Architekten, in close coordination with Bitzer.

Modern energy concept

At the Schaufler Academy, heating and cooling are provided by efficient heat pumps, underground latent storage (ice storage), a solar thermal collector and a combined heat and power system.

"This concept underlines our commitment to developing products for sustainable energy use and climate protection. As such, the Academy allows us to present systems featuring Bitzer components to our customers in a direct way," says Volker Stamer, director of the Schaufler Academy.

The ice storage system collects temporarily available cooling and thermal energy, which can be retrieved when it is required. This enables Bitzer to balance the fluctuating energy supply, while also using renewable sources of energy for space heating and cooling.

"We installed a heat pump with two Bitzer ORBIT 8 scroll compressors of the type GSD80295 for the building heating and cooling. With their high efficiency at full-load and part-load and the wide application limits for which they’re known, these compressors are ideal for heat pump systems with reverse cycling," emphasizes Dr Armin Walz.

The integrated heat pump is responsible for a large part of the building heating and covers the base load of the building cooling. A liquid chiller is also responsible for the mechanical cooling of demonstration systems and covering peak loads in building cooling. By using Bitzer’s CSVH26-200Y compact screw compressor with integrated frequency inverter, the cooling system can be infinitely adjusted between 16 and 100 per cent and the entire system used very efficiently. The liquid chiller also features heat recovery to support building heating.

Multifunctional building

Bitzer had planned for the Schaufler Academy to be a multifunctional building from the very beginning. The new three-story building is ten meters tall and has five rooms for theoretical and three areas for practical training. Three training rooms can also be connected to form a large lecture hall that can accommodate up to 120 people. With a gross floor area of 3,400 square meters [36,600 sq ft], the building can host several training courses at the same time. In addition, the Schaufler Academy contains office space for the training staff and a cafeteria with seating for 110 people. Furthermore, with its appealing architectural design, the Schaufler Academy serves as a striking new reception building for the production facility at Rottenburg-Ergenzingen, the international competence center for Bitzer screw compressors.