Chiller Tender Checklist: 16 Supplier Questions and 10-Year TCO

This is a 20-page guide for chief engineers, lead design engineers and procurement managers who are writing a chiller specification, running a tender or comparing proposals already on the table. In our experience, up to 70% of buyers repeat the same set of mistakes at the selection stage. Each one costs anywhere from several million rubles in repairs and overpaid electricity to tens of millions in lost production. The PDF covers 13 of these mistakes, each laid out as "problem → consequences → engineering solution", followed by the red flags you can spot right in a supplier's technical and commercial proposal. It ends with a 16-question supplier checklist and a simple 10-year cost of ownership model. The mistakes themselves are discussed in depth in my article How to choose an industrial chiller; the PDF is the working tool for the tender. The PDF is in Russian; the key points are below in English.

What is inside the guide?

• The cost of mistakes in numbers and a map of the document.

• Part I: 7 technical mistakes: heat load calculation, cooling type, energy efficiency, components, winter start-up, controls, free cooling.

• Part II: 3 design and operation mistakes: no margin for growth, no installation and maintenance plan, ignoring the cost of failure and redundancy.

• Part III: 3 economic mistakes: blind reliance on imports, ignoring the life cycle, superficial comparison of tender bids.

• Part IV: a 16-question tender checklist with columns for three suppliers.

• Part V: the structure of total cost of ownership (TCO) and a simple 10-year model for a 1,000 kW chiller.

• Part VI: our experience: the NCT plant, design center, service team, customers.

Key takeaways

Buyers save on 15–20% of the price and lose up to 70% of the cost of ownership. When a buyer says "let's save on the chiller", the savings come from three places: the compressor and heat exchanger brands, the controls, and the engineering of the cooling scheme. Together these three blocks are about 15–20% of the unit's price and up to 70% of its total cost of ownership over 10 years. Chillers of the same capacity can differ twofold in power consumption depending on the scheme.

No time to read it all? Start with mistakes 1, 3, 11 and 12. Heat load calculation, energy efficiency, blind reliance on imports and an ignored life cycle lead to replacing equipment before it is fully depreciated more often than any others.

The cooling scheme changes energy use several times over. An illustration for 1,000 kW of cooling running around the clock: an air-cooled packaged chiller uses about 2.6 million kWh a year, a water-cooled chiller with a wet cooling tower about 1.3 million kWh, and an absorption chiller on cheap heat uses tens of times less electricity, although it has to be compared on its full energy cost. An efficient scheme typically pays back in 2–4 years, variable-speed controls in 2–3 years, and free cooling in central and northern Russia often pays back in 2–4 seasons.

The purchase is the smaller part of the cost. Based on our design practice from 2010 to 2026, purchase, delivery, installation and commissioning make up about 20–25% of TCO, electricity 45–55%, service and scheduled repairs 12–18%, and the risk of downtime without a standby unit 8–15%.

A simple model shows the scale. An air-cooled 1,000 kW chiller, capital cost of a notional RUB 18 million, average consumption of about 300 kW, a tariff of RUB 7 per kWh, round-the-clock operation, service at 3% of the price per year. Over 10 years electricity comes to RUB 184 million, service to RUB 5.4 million, about RUB 207 million in total. The purchase here is about 9%: in round-the-clock operation the chiller's price is roughly one tenth of what it costs over 10 years. The figures illustrate the logic.

Price the downtime before you cut costs. A buyer saves a notional RUB 10 million on equipment and loses RUB 100 million in plant downtime when the only chiller fails. If downtime is expensive, consider N+1 redundancy (a duty unit plus a standby unit), special versions and explosion protection where the process requires them.

Imports in 2026 mean risk. Currency risk, 3–6 months for a spare part, service 2–3 times more expensive, and the risk that the manufacturer withdraws support. Red flags in a proposal: spare parts with a lead time of 10 weeks or more, and a contract with no fixed exchange rate.

Do not compare bids by the bottom line. A 20–30% spread between three bids often hides a stripped-down scope, weaker components and no service, and within a year the extra spending on upgrades and repairs exceeds the original price difference. If a supplier cannot answer 5 or more checklist items, or writes "to be confirmed later", it usually means "this is not in our standard package, you will pay for it later". All 13 mistakes can be prevented in 1–2 weeks of a properly structured selection.

Who is it for?

• Chief engineers and technical directors: reliability criteria over a 15–20 year horizon.

• Design engineers and lead designers: checks at the design and working documentation stages, covering calculation, piping, controls and redundancy.

• Procurement managers and directors: how to compare bids on substance, not on the bottom line.

• Anyone already running a tender: print the checklist and tick it off against the bid comparison table.

FAQ

What should I ask a chiller supplier in a tender?

The checklist has 16 items: selection by actual load and climate, winter operation, justification of the cooling type, COP/EER and annual power consumption, variable-speed drives, free cooling, component brands and refrigerant, spare parts stocked in Russia, controls and integration protocols (Modbus, BACnet, OPC), installation and maintenance, N+1 redundancy, warranty and certification, an in-house service team, and a 10-year TCO calculation. Ask for written answers with references to the specification.

Which codes are the recommendations checked against?

SP 60.13330.2020 (Russian HVAC code), SP 131.13330.2020 (Russian building climatology code), GOST 30494-2011 (Russian indoor climate standard) and Federal Law 261-FZ (Russian energy saving law), plus our own manufacturing practice at NCT in St. Petersburg.

Related articles

• How to choose an industrial chiller: 13 costly mistakes

• Chiller total cost of ownership: purchase vs 15 years of running

• Chiller free cooling: when the compressor stops and what it saves

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