National Leisure Group makes huge savings with Digicon Drives
As part of the UK's ongoing mission to monitor and reduce CO2 emissions and energy usage, a National Leisure Group consisting of more than 90 health clubs across the UK found that their pumps and fans were constantly using more energy than was required.
After carrying out extensive site surveys and running free of charge trials, controls experts Digicon Solutions evaluated that the pump and fan installations at the Clubs had all been sized to provide copious amounts of reserve capacity that would not be needed during day to day operation. Our expert engineers at Digicon, discovered that the majority of the applications were fitted with single speed starters, which meant the pumps and fans always operated at full speed, irrespective of the actual requirements. This wasted money and created far more energy consumption than acceptable in these challenging times, where energy saving and reduced CO2 emissions are paramount to ensuring a greener planet.
Digicon suggested that fitting variable speed drives with timers, CO2 sensors, day/night real time clocks, and humidity sensors would allow the motors' operating speeds to be matched to the demand. This significantly reduced the energy usage.
Our experts advised that the potential for savings in applications of this type is excellent, as the power used is proportional to the cube of the speed.
To date, Digicon have installed more than 520 Variable Speed Drives for over 90 Centres within this Group across the UK. By using our Drives, the group is currently making savings of over £400,000 per year.
We have also installed approximately 600 additional drives to other leading Leisure Clubs nationwide!
By using a Variable Speed Drive (VSD) to reduce the speed of a pump or fan application you can typically achieve the following savings;
- reduce motor speed by 10%, achieve a 27% reduction in energy consumption
- reduce motor speed by 20%, achieve a 48% reduction in energy consumption
