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| Geoff Renshaw, Director, Powermaster |
In February Redditch Borough Council announced plans to recycle waste heat from the town crematorium, which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. The local authority maintains that this would be an environmentally efficient use of energy that could save £14,000 a year at its Abbey Stadium facility. However, officials from Unison called the plans “sick and an insult to local residents", spearheading the public outcry against the idea.
Powermaster’s belief is that similar energy savings could be made using less controversial methods, in place of or alongside the existing plans. Geoff Renshaw a director of the company explains, “Reducing energy costs by diverting surplus heat to colder areas of buildings can easily be achieved using less controversial means. There are also a number of other effective methods for reducing energy spend and carbon emissions in leisure centres and pools, which could reduce the costs even more than re-using crematorium heat. For example, variable speed drives can be used to control water pumps, voltage optimisers can reduce electricity costs and internal heat recovery can decrease heating expenditure,” he continued.
“Some parts of a leisure centre or sports facility are not only heated, but accumulate heat that can be re-used elsewhere as part of the process in the room. Good examples are excess heat from a heating system or the bodies in a gym or process based heat from a kitchen. Rather than wasting this by expelling it from the building, there are various ways in which one can recycle and re-use the thermal energy, by redirecting it into cooler areas of the building. As well as leading to significant cost savings, this kind of heat recovery also reduces the build-up of condensation, a perennial problem in leisure facilities,” added Renshaw.
