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| Ackworth School |
Ackworth School in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, was founded as a boarding school for Quaker boys and girls in 1779. Today it has 550 pupils of many different faiths aged 2-18. Ackworth School has excellent facilities including several sports pitches, a swimming pool, a sports hall, a fitness room, a gymnasium, tennis and netball courts, squash courts and use of a nearby all weather pitch and golf course.
Peter Cheseldine has been clerk of works at Ackworth School for ten years, and his experience also includes a spell as chief engineer at the landmark Savoy Hotel in London. “The Savoy had its own standby generation plant, boilers and UPS. It was like an autonomous city in its own right,” he recalls.
Shortly after joining Ackworth School, Peter recommended to the governors that it installed Variable Speed Drives (VSD’s) for the swimming pool pump motors in order to reduce energy costs, which were rising rapidly. In this respect, Peter was one of the early adopters of VSD’s in the UK, reinforced by the efforts of the Energy Services and Technology Association (ESTA) who were helping get the message across to UK industry.
“I have been going to ESTA events for eight years now and I had ideas on how to save energy here at Ackworth School,” continued Peter. “But getting the financing for Variable Speed Drives approved by my superiors was an uphill struggle initially. However, as energy prices went up and up, they realised that they should be doing something to save energy.
“I was very much driven by energy savings and installing the equipment provided by Powermaster has saved the school considerable amounts of money on energy costs, particularly related to the swimming pool.
“Now we are gradually getting everything else in the school upgraded to a very advanced standard of energy saving. This is not easy because Ackworth School is a Grade 1 listed building and we are very restricted in certain areas as to what we can do. The only three-phase motors the school has are in the swimming pool, but last year, we also went on to install Powermaster’s Integrated Water & Energy Management System (IWEMS).
“IWEMS automatically tests swimming pool water quality and dosing. This also affects the speed of the pumps, so when we adopted it we saved yet more money.”
IWEMS constantly monitors the chemical demands of each individual pool, and recognises when bathing loads have changed. The system will signal the VSD’s to reduce motor speed when bathing loads are low (i.e., when chemical demands have fallen) and, conversely, to increase motor speed when bathing loads increase and when chemical demands rise.
Quite simply this means that the IWEMS system ensures that the pump motor speeds are at their lowest at ALL times, thereby maximising energy savings, whilst at the same time ensuring that chemical mixing characteristics are spot on.
Powermaster’s Remote Device Monitoring system (RDM) allows a client to access details of the performance of the installation at all times, and will show exactly what energy is being used in real time, and what has been used over a given period. All data is fed to a web-based application, which enables expert monitoring and accurate reporting.
Complementing IWEMS is the Powermaster VRS Voltage Optimiser/Stabiliser, which reduces electricity consumption and costs. The VRS automatically reduces a site voltage to a constant, stable output voltage of 380V.
Because the VRS reacts to both over-voltage and under-voltage, it guarantees a stable site voltage of 380V at all times. This is ideal for all equipment such as lighting, computers and motors, for example, all of which are designed to run more efficiently at this level. By supplying a reduced output voltage of 380V not only will this result in a significant reduction in electricity consumption, but it will also reduce wear and tear on all such equipment.
“This year, we also installed Powermaster’s VRS Voltage Optimiser/Stabiliser, which controls the voltage on site to stable levels and gets rid of harmonics, and we are looking to further reduced energy costs in the region of 7-10%,” adds Peter.
“Return on investment has been quick on this equipment, especially with speed control on the swimming pool pumps, where we are saving anything up to 30% now. Total payback was only about three years, so we have had five years of pure saving.”
