Good refrigeration costs less at Sainsbury’s
Sainsbury’s has reduced its refrigeration energy use by 15%, amounting to over £4 million a year, across 456 of its stores. The savings have been obtained by using Parasense energy-monitoring, optimisation and exception equipment. The savings represent 5% of Sainsbury’s total energy use. Knowing that refrigeration comprises 40 to 60% of a store’s energy bill, Sainsbury’s embarked on a programme of energy-saving and conservation. Parasense was appointed to implement a refrigeration energy-management project. The first store to implement the system was at Greenwich Peninsula. Existing usage analysis and the creation of an energy model for the stores was the first step. Electricity consumption for refrigeration, lighting and HVAC was recorded to provide a benchmark for each site. Automated analysis of data revealed variations in energy usage, from which energy-consumption models could be developed to predict energy usage for each store over the spectrum of environmental and trading conditions. With benchmarks in place, Parasense optimised existing plant and fixtures to deliver energy savings. Parasense’s work included monitoring maintenance contractors against key performance indicators such as optimising plant for energy efficiency, activity analysis, length of time to fix and repeat-call analysis. All stores are polled every 30 minutes and data automatically analysed by Parasense. If energy consumption fluctuates beyond the benchmark, the system automatically activates a response mechanism. John Skelton says, ‘It’s called exception management and is the key to sustaining energy savings and highlighting a problem before it develops into a major issue. You can’t manage what you can’t measure. The data collected is an invaluable tool for clients to see for themselves the results of the analysis, interpret the data and manage a situation before it gets out of control.’
Related links:
