The Dunedin Dominos store, in the state of Florida, is one of three franchises owned and operated by local businessman Mike McDermott
His store was recently selected to act as one of six test pilots for energy saving by the Dominos Franchisee Association (DFA) which represents the 2,500 independent business owners who operate close to 60% of Dominos’ US locations.
Florida based BEST distributor, Eco Energy, were engaged to work with six independent stores across the US, representing the geographic and climatic variety of the wider group. Should Eco be able to demonstrate savings exceeding 20% across the test sites, a national roll out would begin.
A Systematic Approach
Following the systematic EnergyMaps process, Eco Energy installed Eniscope Real Time Energy Monitoring at the Dunedin store in order to gauge a baseline. This would enable the Eco team to pin point savings and demonstrate the effectiveness of any remedial action taken.
“The benefit of the EnergyMaps process is that it allows you to see where you were before and what your potential energy reductions can be.” Says Mike.
Targets for Reduction
Immediately after installing the Eniscope equipment a load imbalance was identified at the store; however, a period of monitoring was required to verify that this was an on-going issue, and not just a temporary fault.
By comparing store opening times with energy consumption patterns at the store further targets for reduction were identified.
By reviewing the full Eniscope data gathered over a period of 4 weeks it was possible to determine the main areas of energy consumption at the store and provide a detailed plan of action to reduce consumption.
The plan identified a range of no or low cost options, as well as a number of targets for load reduction through retrofit, energy saving devices.
Work Begins
Mike agreed to the proposed plans and work began to start reducing the stores energy consumption.
AircoSense, a retrofit device capable of reducing the energy consumption of air conditioning systems by up to 35%, was installed on the air con.
A Chilled Unit Energy Saver (CUES), a retrofit device that can reduce the energy consumption of refrigeration by up to 33%, was installed on the stores walk-in freezer.
An Intelligent Motor Energy Controller (iMEC) was installed on Dunedin’s refrigerated ‘make table’, ensuring that the torque was set to match it’s load, with potential savings of up to 10%.
LED lighting and occupancy sensors were installed throughout the store, with the potential for savings of 50% upwards.
An Impressive Result
All the improvements to the store were delivered on a 2.4-year payback against KWh savings alone, factoring in maintenance reductions a further 30% could be knocked off this period, bringing the ROI inside 2 years.
The store immediately benefitted from an energy reduction, and by monitoring energy consumption for a period of months following the changes, it has been possible to track the savings made. Those savings total 34% of the stores on-going energy consumption, a significant reduction in the energy bill, and well above the 20% target.
A similar result has been achieved across the other five stores in the pilot. The DFA has reviewed the results and a national roll out is expected to begin later this year.