Energy Efficiency Can Destroy Drax Power Station

Posted on 09. Sep, 2009 by Ross in Press Releases, United Kingdom

Drax Power Station in Yorkshire, UK is the biggest power station in Western Europe. By burning up to 36,000 tonnes of coal a day and producing 22,800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, Drax supplies 7% of the UK’s entire energy needs.

And it’s totally pointless.

In an interview with BBC Radio about the launch of the Big Business Refit, Keith Wyatt from energy-saving company Somar International Ltd explained that simply switching the lighting used in warehouses and industrial units across the country to more energy-efficient warehouse lighting would save enough energy to make the power generated by Drax totally redundant.

Warehouses are typically lit by old metal halide or high pressure sodium (SON) lighting, which are terribly inefficient when installed, and just get worse or time: they lose 10% of their output over the first 100 hours of operation, and 35-40% of their intensity over just the first 6,000-8,000 hours of use.

Somar Eluma energy-efficient lighting is able to provide the same quality of light for half the power, by using more efficient fluorescent tubes and advanced photometric design. The unit’s intelligent sensor affords additional savings by adjusting the lamps’ outputs for ambient daylight and by sensing nearby occupancy. In total, the Eluma lighting system can save companies 70-80% on their lighting bills, which makes a substantial saving across most businesses’ total energy consumption.

Well-known global soft-drinks giant Coca Cola installed Eluma lighting in an eastern European bottling plant, reducing the plant’s lighting energy needs by 80% whilst adding to the light levels in the plant by 50%!The financial savings amounted to