Optimisation can reduce energy consumption up to 70%, says Grundfos’ Kostas Poulopoulos
The Danish company’s area MD tells MECN about the different kind of audits conducted for energy and water optimisation
Grundfos’ experience in HVAC applications have shown that there is big potential on saving energy and electricity through optimisation, Kostas Poulopoulos, the firm’s area managing director for the Gulf, Levant and Pakistan, has told MECN while providing an overview of how a combination of pumps, controls and monitoring can optimise the pumping process to reduce energy consumption by up to 70 percent.
Poulopoulos said that return of investment opportunities can arise in different forms. They also depend on the type of application and system, but normally a good case is when the return of investment period is in the range of one to two and a half years, he said.
Elaborating on the different kinds of audits for energy and water savings, Poulopoulos said that they are of three different kinds – the energy check, the pump audit and the energy audit.
“The first type is called the energy check, it’s an assessment based on the existing assets, to see how much you have today, how big it is, and theoretically, how much energy it consumes, and based on that we run the assessment and modelling and we propose an energy optimisation and/or retrofitting solutions,” he said.
While the second kind is called the pump audit, he said that it will be more focused on the pumps, as the name suggests. Poulopoulos stated that for the pump audit, they get into the system of pumping application and fix sensors and monitor real-time operations of the systems using their own toolbox.
“We already have the theoretical consumption data based on the name-plates of the equipment and from the energy check, but through the pump audit we get a more hands-on and precise optimisation solution based on actual demand.”
“And the third level is the energy audit. This is where we look at the entire system, not only pumping. We look at all different elements of the system, with our own energy audit tool, and based on that we propose a solution,” Poulopoulos said.
The energy check and the pump audit focus on pumps, but the former is theoretical in nature and the latter focuses on performance data while the energy audit concentrates of the complete application. Poulopoulos concluded that out of the three types- the energy audit gives the overall assessment of the energy consumption of a system.
