UK – Toshiba’s VRF system, SMMS-e, was one of the big winners at the recent H&V News Awards in London. The ceremony saw the SMMS-e collect the HVAC product of the year award, meaning that the SMMS-e has now achieved a unique hat-trick of awards as the product has now won the top prize for air conditioning innovation in three of the industry’s major awards. The H&V award follows on from similar successes at both the National ACR Awards and ACR News Awards earlier this year.

The H&V awards ceremony took place at The Grosvenor on London’s Park Lane, in front of an audience of more than 1000 leading players from across the industry. Other winners on the night included tado whose Smart Thermostat won the accessory of the year, London Underground who won the collaboration of the year award for their trial of air-handling units in a complex environment, Cool Therm for project of the year and Ventive whose Ventive C won air movement product of the year.

Commenting on their decision to crown the SMMS-e as product of the year, the judges said: “Toshiba’s SMMS-e achieves best-in-class energy efficiency by combining a vast number of innovative and proven technologies in one product.”

Toshiba assert that the SMMS-e is the only VRF system on the market whose outdoor units all have a rating exceeding 7 ESEER (European Seasonally Adjusted Energy Efficiency Rating).

David Dunn, the director and general manager of Toshiba UK, welcomed the award, saying “We are delighted that SMMS-e has again triumphed, and gained its third major accolade this year for innovation and energy performance. Independent endorsement by no fewer than three separate industry judging panels confirms our belief in the product as industry-leading – and in the most important and competitive sector of the air conditioning industry.”

The judges revealed that the SMMS-e’s innovations in three core technologies – the compressor, heat exchanger and advanced intelligent control – were key aspects towards their decision to crown it as product of the year. These innovations to the core technologies were acknowledged to have combined to deliver outstanding efficiency and comfort for building occupants. The SMMS-e features a new rotary compressor, developed and manufactured by Toshiba, which uses a two-stage compression process to deliver improved efficiency and performance. Toshiba have also disclosed that the wear surfaces on compression vanes are treated with a high-tech Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) coating, hereby improving the hardness, wear resistance and reliability of the compressor. This in turn creates a significant increase in compressor rotation speed, resulting in a higher displacement volume – with Toshiba claiming that this improvement can be up to 50% greater than for the previous generation of VRF systems. These changes mean that the SMMS-e can allow a higher duty to be obtained from a smaller compressor, while using less power.

David Dunn suggested that Toshiba would not stop there, concluding “As I have said before, we are thrilled with the recognition however we are not resting on our laurels. The SHRM-e VRF, to be launched later this year, will build on the success of the SMMS-e, and feature further innovations in technology that will contribute to even higher efficiencies and ease of installation and servicing.”