Air con upgrade

Replacing the existing drives would also allow the airport to take advantage of the latest fault-finding features of modern drives, such as those offered by ABB.

"In particular, we were interested in the functions that modern drives have, giving us more control over their operation. The load monitoring function is very useful, as if a belt fails, the load will change, causing an alarm to be raised. This is quicker than trying to determine the fault through inspection," says Steve Cox, engineering and maintenance manager for Bristol Airport.

"Also, we recently had a new BMS (building management system) installed. The ability to link drives to the BMS and send alarms to engineers also ensures we can identify and resolve faults quickly.”

The complete installation uses 12 ABB HVAC drives to run six AHUs. Situated in the basement airside, two are 15kW on units used for air intake only. Five are 22 kW for air intake and the other five are of 18.5kW for air extraction.