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Swimming pool energy upgrades must include pumps on ‘shopping list’

Swimming pool energy upgrades must include pumps on ‘shopping list’

By: David Williamson of Wilo UK

With £63m of funding made available by the government to help swimming pools stay open, upgrading old and inefficient pumps must be on the agenda to ensure these facilities are as energy efficient as they can be for the foreseeable future.

The Spring Budget may have left many divided once again, but one thing is for sure, the new £63m funding made available by the Chancellor to help pools stay afloat is a welcome one.

Available for one year only, the fund will be managed by Sport England. As Tim Hollingsworth, the chief executive of the sporting body put it, the support is “significant” as he recognises that swimming pools “play a vital role in our communities and are enormously important in helping people to be physically active” (The Guardian).

The main aim of the fund is to help council-run swimming pools with decarbonisation and long-term energy efficiency, with £40m of the total devoted to investment. The remaining £23m is going to be available as grants to help with alleviating immediate costs and help under-pressure swimming pools to survive.

With that said, it’s imperative that this £40m is spent wisely. There is a long list of options available to pool owners to achieve long-term energy efficiency. Arguably though, pump upgrades should be at top of that, as these products can be the source of unnecessarily high energy expenditure, especially in these energy intensive buildings.

The retrofit opportunity

Many public swimming pools in the UK are now decades old, and some may have even been constructed before the 20th Century, such as Warrender Baths in Edinburgh which opened in 1887.

Given the age of these buildings, most will be highly inefficient by today’s new build standards. Worryingly, if these buildings are still running on pumps that are considered ‘old’ technology, i.e., pumps with AC motors that work at fixed speeds and in silo to other building services, then they could be wasting lots of energy, day after day. Not only this, but they don’t offer any insights to help swimming pool owners help drive energy efficiency going forward.

One of the biggest changes in pumps is the advent of ‘smart’ technology, and this has been made possible with the breakthrough of electronically commutated (EC) motor technology. To demonstrate this, switching from a circulator pump with an AC motor to one with an EC motor can provide an immediate 30% reduction in energy use. Many of these newer pumps also have variable speed drives on board too, meaning there is no need to install these components separately in what could be quite small spaces and plant rooms.

Going even further, it’s important to seek out pumps that have undergone a complete overhaul, rather than just surface-level equipping of more EC motors. Many old pumps will be inefficient in terms of their hydraulic design, and although most manufacturers may already be fitting more efficient motors, they may still be using existing hydraulic components. Even though this does bring some greater efficiency to the pump, the levels of performance are incomparable to a pump that has undergone a redesign of its hydraulics.

So, when EC motor technology, smart controls and an optimised hydraulic design come together, pumps can become much ‘smarter’ and efficient in operation. The result is that pumps can work at lower speeds while still performing their necessary function, meaning energy savings can be increased by as much as 60%.

Offering intelligence for better energy strategies

Pumps should no longer be seen simply as a vehicle of moving water around a building. Along with immediate energy savings through smarter, automated operation, pumps can also be used to help define an ongoing energy usage strategy.

Performance data, alerts, warnings and notifications can all ensure systems are well maintained and operating to their highest efficiency at all times. In swimming pools, where so much energy is used on secondary hot water systems and heating the facilities, this is invaluable. Data such as heat flow, cooling flow, volume flow is all available from modern pumps, all to help optimise a building’s energy needs.

This data may have previously been hidden with static (or sometimes now known as ‘dumb’) products and equipment. The combination of this data with other smart systems can provide insight into usage patterns. The result is betterregulated indoor climate control that keeps power consumption to a minimum. ■

For more information, Phone: +44 (0) 1283 523000 Email: sales.uk@wilo.com