Maximum Energy Efficiency Delivered for London Landmark

The Challenge

This famous London skyscraper required a new more energy-efficient booster set. One which met the building’s current demand more cost-effectively.

The existing booster set had started to show several points of failure along with the customer’s concern that the system had multiple points of single failure. If left unrectified, the water supply for the whole building would have stopped.

The installation was further complicated by restricted access and restricted available downtime.

The Solution

Dura Pump attended the site to assess and recommended the following installation:

Variable speed, Grundfos Hydro MPC-E 4 Booster set with integrated inverters and a control panel.
New suction and discharge pipework to connect the booster set to the tank and the existing discharge pipework.
Rework the discharge pipework from the tank so that the two tanks drain equally. This included supplying new pipework from the two isolation valves. We reduced the size of the pipework coming out of the nearest tank to limit the flow and equalise what was being drawn from both tanks.
Supply and install new cable and cable trays to connect the new booster set to the existing power supply.
Provide a BMS communications module to communicate with the new BMS system.

Alongside the new fit-out, our engineers also removed the old pump system and equipment and wrapped lagging on the newly installed pipework.

An added challenge to this project was that our engineers had to assemble the system off site for testing, dismantle it due to restricted access and then re-assemble it again once on site. The final connection was conducted out of hours to avoid disruption to the operating of the building.

Outcome

The new variable speed booster set now successfully delivers:  

Energy savings – original booster set 36.9kW, new booster set 32.29kW.
Greater flexibility to meet our customer’s needs.
Constant reliable pressure.
Inverters delivering greatest efficiency.
A system that delivers reduced wear and tear on pipework and valves.

Impressively, we managed to deliver this project within the constraints of the current power supply which the customer was pleased about as this resulted in a huge saving on their part.

Key Points

The latest Grundfos E-Pump using permanent magnet IE5 motor installed.
The set runs on average 12 hours a day, 5 days a week. This is a 14,300 kWh saving per year.
Fully automated and programmed solution for maximum energy efficiency.
The new booster set has very few single points of failure.