17-19: Should EDF Switch from EN 14705 Long Term Performance Tests to ATC-105

As the owner of 32 large cooling towers, EDF has been performing its own thermal performance acceptance tests during the past 30 years. The company invests a lot in verifying as accurately as possible that a cooling tower reaches the guaranteed year average performance. EDF uses a “long term” test procedure developed by EDF Research department during the 80’s. “Long Term” means data acquisition running from 3 to 9 months which implies specific attention during the whole period and increases the cost of the test. Five years ago EDF started being more involved in CTI ATC-105 revision process. It appears that CTI’s approach could be a way to optimize EDF acceptance tests. EDF launched a comparison study between EDF “long term approach” and ATC-105 “short term approach” based on recent acceptance test data. The paper presents some of the main results that come out of this study.