Patent attributes
A cooling system has a cabinet and a plurality of separate cooling stages including an upstream cooling stage and a downstream cooling stage. At least the upstream cooling state is a variable capacity cooling stage. Each cooling stage has a cooling circuit. Evaporators of the cooling circuits are arranged in the cabinet so that air passes over them in serial fashion. A controller when a Call for Cooling first reaches a point where cooling is needed, operating the upstream cooling circuit to provide cooling and not the downstream cooling circuit. When the Call for Cooling has increased to a second point, the controller additionally operates the downstream cooling circuit to provide cooling. The cooling capacity at which the upstream cooling circuit is being operated is less than its full capacity when the Call for Cooling reaches the second point.