Fans and Blowers

Fans and blowers are some of the most neglected pieces of equipment in industrial and large commercial settings. Once installed and commissioned, fans are rarely checked for efficiency and performance unless there is a severe problem with the function they were meant to serve.

Fans can compress and/or mix the fluid that they are supposed to be moving. Mixing and over-compression are signs of inefficient fan use. Unlike pumps however, fans may not alert you if they are running inefficiently because they will just usually operate quietly and happily in most regions of their curve while drawing more power than necessary. Unfortunately this results in energy waste, poor system performance and may cause premature failure of components.

Manitoba Hydro provides assistance in the analysis of fan and blower systems through Scoping Studies:

• Scoping studies (included as part of basic customer service): A study completed by Manitoba Hydro that measures the performance and power consumption of a fan or blower system. This provides an operational benchmark and identifies opportunities for energy savings and performance improvements. Instrumentation is placed on the customer's system to monitor the operating characteristics. The resulting data forms the base-line energy consumption and operating parameters of the system, and identifies energy savings and performance improvement opportunities.

The Scoping Study usually leads to a Feasibility Study that more accurately details the project options, capital costs, energy savings, operational and reliability improvements, and also calculates the Performance Optimization Program incentive that reduces the capital cost of a project. The benefits of reviewing a fan or blower system may include:

• reduced energy cost;
• increased system performance, reliability and efficiency;
• reduced maintenance and downtime;
• incentives to reduce the capital cost of a project and accelerate payback.

For more information, contact your Energy Services Advisor at 1-204-360-4698.