Portable sub-meter helps police force identify energy savings
Marshall-Tufflex’s portable sub-meters have helped Bedfordshire Police identify potential energy savings as part of an initiative to cut power bills by 25% in two years. The force invested in the handheld Sinergy e-Tracker sub-meter two years ago and used it in police stations, operational bases and its headquarters at Kempston to audit energy use and highlight areas of inefficient power use.
Estates and facilities manager Nigel Achurch explains, ‘The sub-meter has saved us a significant amount of money and helped us identify and prioritise energy-saving initiatives.
‘At headquarters, e-Tracker identified unbalanced loads across the three phases. We are investigating what we can move from one phase to another to bring the apparent power closer to the true power.’
On one site a weather compensator linked to night storage heaters was found to be malfunctioning.
The e-Tracker sub-meter uses clip-on transducers to monitor currents from 10 to 2500 A. It can show the pattern of demand over an hour, day, week or month and collect it on a USB device. The sub-meter was used for two or three weeks at each location.
