{"paper":{"title":"Optimizing Chilled Water Systems with Cooling Towers via Virtual Power Metrics and Extremum-Seeking Control","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/","headline":"An extremum-seeking controller for cooling tower fans minimizes total chilled water plant power with virtual power meters.","cross_cats":["cs.SY"],"primary_cat":"eess.SY","authors_text":"Alex Vlachokostas, Karthik Devaprasad, Matt Cornachione, Min Gyung Yu, Stephanie Johnson, Tim A. Yoder, Timothy I. Salsbury","submitted_at":"2026-05-14T21:25:44Z","abstract_excerpt":"This paper presents an extremum seeking control (ESC) method for cooling tower fans to minimize overall power consumption of a chilled water plant system. Simulation studies across different climate locations demonstrate energy savings of approximately 15% compared to conventional control during summer conditions. This paper also proposes a virtual power meter (VPM) to enable use of the strategy in systems that lack physical power meters. Validation tests for the VPMs against physical meters showed good accuracy with a correlation of 96.11% and a normalized error of 5.11%. Coupled with the VPM"},"claims":{"count":4,"items":[{"kind":"strongest_claim","text":"Simulation studies across different climate locations demonstrate energy savings of approximately 15% compared to conventional control during summer conditions. Validation tests for the VPMs against physical meters showed good accuracy with a correlation of 96.11% and a normalized error of 5.11%.","source":"verdict.strongest_claim","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C1","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"weakest_assumption","text":"The extremum-seeking controller can locate and track the true minimum of total plant power by varying only cooling-tower fan speed while all other system components and loads remain unchanged or are correctly captured by the simulation model (implicit in the ESC convergence analysis and the summer-condition simulation setup).","source":"verdict.weakest_assumption","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C2","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"one_line_summary","text":"Extremum-seeking control for cooling tower fans plus virtual power meters achieves ~15% simulated energy savings in chilled water plants while maintaining 96% correlation to physical meters.","source":"verdict.one_line_summary","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C3","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"headline","text":"An extremum-seeking controller for cooling tower fans minimizes total chilled water plant power with virtual power meters.","source":"verdict.pith_extraction.headline","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C4","attestation":"unclaimed"}],"snapshot_sha256":"358128e0c29ae45be168c444c99987d2307480c353a063ee6cabaa325f873d09"},"source":{"id":"2605.15431","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":"472f9ff2-e3c1-4685-a79f-daf9cd87dc64","model_set":{"reader":"grok-4.3"},"created_at":"2026-05-19T14:55:22.071374Z","strongest_claim":"Simulation studies across different climate locations demonstrate energy savings of approximately 15% compared to conventional control during summer conditions. Validation tests for the VPMs against physical meters showed good accuracy with a correlation of 96.11% and a normalized error of 5.11%.","one_line_summary":"Extremum-seeking control for cooling tower fans plus virtual power meters achieves ~15% simulated energy savings in chilled water plants while maintaining 96% correlation to physical meters.","pipeline_version":"pith-pipeline@v0.9.0","weakest_assumption":"The extremum-seeking controller can locate and track the true minimum of total plant power by varying only cooling-tower fan speed while all other system components and loads remain unchanged or are correctly captured by the simulation model (implicit in the ESC convergence analysis and the summer-condition simulation setup).","pith_extraction_headline":"An extremum-seeking controller for cooling tower fans minimizes total chilled water plant power with virtual power meters."},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2605.15431/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[{"name":"cited_work_retraction","ran_at":"2026-05-19T15:54:43.079277Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"citation_quote_validity","ran_at":"2026-05-19T15:50:31.126097Z","status":"completed","version":"0.1.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"doi_title_agreement","ran_at":"2026-05-19T15:31:17.764530Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"doi_compliance","ran_at":"2026-05-19T15:10:58.002310Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"claim_evidence","ran_at":"2026-05-19T14:21:54.130539Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"ai_meta_artifact","ran_at":"2026-05-19T13:33:22.694481Z","status":"skipped","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0}],"snapshot_sha256":"964e73b15e10fba3c3f4ef38d6a4a1443957153caef1bbed17206a37f88efd82"},"references":{"count":42,"sample":[{"doi":"","year":1993,"title":"Michael F. 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