AHUS | CONTROL SOFTWARE Tesco Ireland national distribution centre gas use: before vs after 250,000 200,000 150,000 100,000 50,000 0 35,556 59,791 141,308 164,074 91,370 88,432 17,246 20,322 30,669 66,592 63,796 12,752 Graph representing consumption of gas before and after the energy-saving project AHUs, so they could effectively overcome the buoyancy of the heated air and transfer it from high level to ground level while minimising the operating time for the AHUs all while maintaining even and steady space environmental conditions. The control optimisation works were undertaken in a live environment without impacting the 24/7 operation of the distribution centre. The smart nature of the energy-savings solution can now be developed for predictive maintenance alerts and future machine learning. Overall, the energy-savings results have far exceeded expectations in what had appeared to be a well-commissioned facility, to produce an energy-use reduction of more than 60%. The wealth of data collected and analysis undertaken has encouraged the client to consider the opportunities to accelerate future ambitions for heat pump solutions. Optimising future system designs with low carbon solutions could deliver further emissions reductions and, potentially, realise significant space savings and reduced maintenance and life-cycle renewal costs, while maintaining acceptable internal environmental conditions. Energy and cost savings This data-driven solution has provided a very important component to achieve a highly cost- and energy-efficient path towards net zero carbon by 2050 for a national distribution centre. Since this control technology was deployed, in October 2020, there has been a saving of 63% on electricity used for ventilation and 64% in gas consumption (using 2019 consumption data as a baseline figure). This represents a total carbon emissions reduction of 873 tonnes up to March 2021. CJ TOM ASCOUGH MCIBSE is a director at Symphony Energy FREE COOLING AND HEATING Air handling unit with sensor points The matrix of temperature sensors in the warehouse 74 September 2021 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE Sep 21 pp73-74 Symphony Tesco.indd 74 27/08/2021 16:28