Earlier this month fan manufacturer ebm-papst hosted a seminar at its Chelmsford headquarters which looked at energy reducing strategies and initiatives.

Industry experts revealed the substantial cost savings that can be achieved through analysing buildings and their existing cooling systems.

They also discussed how more recording of existing data has enabled effective energy savings plans to be developed. A working example demonstrated how one company now sees savings of up to £350,000 a year.

Held on 17 November, the seminar brought together a host of expert industry speakers: including David Jarvis and James Cooper from ebm-papst, Robert Yeowart from Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team, Keith Bertie from Emerson Retail, Mike Creamer from Business Edge Ltd, and Adrian Trevelyan from Airedale International Air Conditioning Ltd.

Managing director of ebm-papst UK, David Jarvis, said: “Within the upgrade business, we have certainly learnt a lot over the past few years and we are striving to learn a lot more. We have enabled our partners to achieve some pretty substantial things. We have some blue chip customers who have listened to what we have to say and we have been delighted to exceed their expectations.”

The first external speaker was Keith Bertie, director of engineering at Emerson Retail Solutions UK. He provided an insight into the assessment of the energy consumption of the 360+ Emerson buildings across Europe as part of the Energy Efficiency Directive: Article 8 (EED A8).

Keith and his team faced a significant challenge gathering this information ahead of the 5 December legislative deadline with varying sized properties in 15 different countries. This was further complicated by the interpretation of the EED A8 legislation differing largely across the European countries. However, the data collected from this work has brought important knowledge which can now be used for energy and cost saving initiatives, including via a pan European energy procurement agreement.

He said: “Everywhere we have been, there is something to do. In some of the biggest factories there is a substantial saving to be made in the future. It’s not just about recommissioning as there is a considerable amount of value to be recovered. This is a real eye-opener for Emerson.”

Speaking further about how to maximise a system’s efficiency through performance knowledge was Mike Creamer, founder of Business Edge, who recommended using the monitoring system – ClimaCheck. He said: “The cost of optimising systems is actually relatively small but the opportunity for savings is considerable. Unfortunately it is impossible to take manual readings in an effective way. The ClimaCheck takes all the pain out of the maths.”

Finally, Adrian Trevelyan, UK service manager from Airedale International Air Conditioning, discussed how they achieved energy savings of up to £350,000 a year with BAE Systems Military and Air Information, after successfully analysing the existing systems and where the heat load needed to be tackled.

Working at BAE’s Warton base, the Airedale team faced a number of challenges: including wide-ranging PAC specifications, 31 individual computer rooms, a critical live environment and high security areas. They conducted a trial in two areas projecting savings of £272,000, long-term energy savings and increased resilience in the site. Work involved retrofitting ebm-papst EC fans and EEVs, upgrading the refrigerant, rationalising floor grilles, connecting to site BEMs, sequence PACs and upgrading the control system. The fans and optimised airflow control alone saw annual savings of 2,252,026kWh.

Adrian said: “A lot of the heat load in the room was generated by the fans themselves, so simply replacing the fans reduced the heat load we were having to deal with. We are generally quite optimistic but in this case we exceeded our own expectations beating them by 27%. BAE’s annual savings are now £350,000 and we actually increased the resilience at the same time.”

ebm-papst holds regular free seminars throughout the year discussing energy and carbon reduction in the built environment.