All Fishers IGA stores in Australia have had their low efficiency freezer and cooling cabinet motors retrofitted with high efficiency iQ motors.
The IGA supermarket in Mooroopna is undergoing small but significant changes.
Neal Murtagh, main installer for Fishers IGA supermarkets in Victoria, is upgrading the freezers and cooling cabinets
.
All Fishers-owned IGA supermarkets in Victoria are undergoing retrofits within their cooling cabinets and freezers, replacing old, inefficient Q motors with high-efficiency ebm-papst iQ motors.
Customers can walk past the working area but are still able to do their shopping as the cooling cabinets don't need to be emptied.
After the quick exchange, the fan impellers get a clean and Murtagh and his colleague move on to the next cabinet.The reasons for the replacement are simple.
“I did the calculations and realised that a replacement with iQ motors can save us thousands of dollars in energy costs per year,” Murtagh says. “Although the motors are more expensive, they have a payback time of only 10 months.”
Murtagh presented his proposal to Fishers' directors and convinced them to upgrade all freezers and cooling cabinets in the 15 supermarkets that are owned by the company.
Stores in Mildura, Ararat and Red Cliffs were first retrofitted, and next on the list were stores in Robinvale, Miners and Kerang.
The upgrade was finished by December last year. A data logger that was installed in the Red Cliffs store before and after the retrofit has shown savings upwards of $13,800 per year just in the one store, calculated at an energy price of $0.14/kW.
Murtagh says there are a number of drivers for the retrofit, including cost savings in the face of continuously rising energy costs in Australia and longer service life.
Other drivers included the short return on investment because of more efficient EC technology, easy replacement (same mounting and dimensions as the Q motor), and simultaneous maintenance of existing equipment.
Murtagh says retrofitting was made easy. “Exchanging the old Q motors
with the new iQ is a matter of minutes,” he says. “For example, one cooling cabinet can be retrofitted in about 15 minutes and doesn’t need to be emptied.
“A typical upgrade of a complete supermarket includes the exchange of 80 to 150 motors and takes two to three working days, and two to three installers.
“Because one display cabinet at a time is being worked on for about 30 minutes, the supermarket can continue its normal business.”
Murtagh says switching over to the new iQ motor technology is worthwhile whenever an old shaded-pole motor should be replaced or energy-savings are desired.
He says the switch pays off for both the environment and the user.
“In the case of the IGA in Mooroopna, the supermarket’s fan energy costs will be reduced by over 50 per cent.”
The benefits of the ebm-papst iQ motors are their high energy efficiency and easy replacement. The model used in the IGA upgrade, iQ 3612, uses 10 watts input power, instead of 58 watts for the Q motors.
This is a power saving of 83 per cent and because it has the same dimensions as the old
Q motor, it can be retrofitted easily. It is a simple drop-in solution, Murtagh says.