Driving down the cost of leisure

Controls experts, Digicon, carried out an extensive evaluation which concluded that the pump and fan installations at the leisure group’s health clubs had all been sized to provide copious amounts of reserve capacity that would not be needed during day to day operation.

Digicon advised the leisure group that they should use Danfoss VLT HVAC drives (IP55) with timers, CO² sensors, day/night real time clocks and humidity sensors; in order to allow the motors operating speeds to be matched to the demand.

Karl Jones, Digicon MD, explains further: "Danfoss drives were the obvious choice for this application. The robustness and proven reliability of the FC102 makes a massive UK/European roll out of this size stress free; leaving me confident that we will not be called back to sites with warranty issues. The functionality of the real time clock also eliminates the need for any additional integration.

"The success continues as Digicon has recently secured orders for an additional 60+ drives to be installed in this leisure groups’ clubs in Holland and Brussels. We have also installed approx 600 additional drives to other major leisure clubs nationwide."

The potential for savings in applications of this type is excellent, as the power used is proportional to the cube of the speed.  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