2004-10-21 - An ABB drive is set to save a holiday park nearly £5,000 on the annual electricity cost for its indoor swimming pool.
Hendra Holiday Park, near Newquay in Cornwall, is a large, family run holiday centre that offers 252 permanent caravan sites and 650 touring pitches.
The holiday park’s swimming pool, one of the largest in the area, has two separate water systems and includes three flumes. Used by 200,000 people over the park’s season of March to October, the pool can see anything up to 220 users at one time. Maintaining the correct air temperature and humidity is vital and the pool employs a Calorex air conditioning system to control the environment of the pool building.
With the advent of the Climate Change Levy, Finance Director Will Dexter was looking to save on energy costs and identified the Calorex unit as a prime candidate for investigation. As well as running during the normal holiday season, the unit also needs to be kept running over the winter in order to maintain the fabric of the building. The fan on the unit was driven at full speed at all times throughout the year, but had its air flow reduced by 40 percent by a damper. This was obviously wasteful and Dexter asked ABB’s Drives Service Partner Advanced Power Drive Systems (APDS) to look at improving the situation.
To determine the possible energy savings, APSD installed an ABB drive on the unit, producing immediate and dramatic savings on running costs. From a normal constant energy use of 31 kW, the variable speed drive reduced this to 17 kW for nine hours in the day and 7 kW for 12 hours at night and for three hours in the day. The night setting represented an energy saving of 77 percent. From annual costs of £6,972, the variable speed drive has cut projected costs to £2,175, a saving of £4,797.
Says Dexter: “I am very pleased with what APDS has achieved for us. I would not have been impressed with mere figures on paper but APDS came and installed a drive at their own expense and demonstrated beyond doubt that these savings are real.”
Another benefit is that the noise emitted by the air conditioning unit has also reduced, making the pool building a more pleasant place for bathers.
The permanent drive is due to be installed this winter. The energy savings are seen by Dexter as the first step in opening the pool all year round, allowing local residents to enjoy the facility.