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19/12/2011
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Alton Towers Resort is standardising on ac drives from Control Techniques for all drive replacements, having faced support issues on existing drives in the air handling plant for the Splash Landings Hotel.
 "It is crucial to keep both the temperature and humidity of the waterpark constant at 29—30°C and around 70% RH [relative humidity] to make the environment comfortable ... and to prevent excessive condensation, so close control of the air handling plant is essential,l" says technical services manager Warren Critchley.
"When we had technical problems with the fan drives on the air handling plant, we were unable to get the kind of support we needed from several drives suppliers. As a breakdown potentially directly impacts on the comfort and convenience of hotel visitors, this was totally unacceptable," he continues.
Critchley says that since switching to Control Techniques drives, he has experienced no failures and, through the firm's distributor Lockwell, now has 24/7 hour service and support.
"All our key electrical staff have been trained in the use of Control Techniques drives and they are now our standard product. As drives reach end of life, we replace them with either Commander SK general purpose drives or Affinity HVAC drives," he states.
Around 20% of the drives at the Splash Landings Hotel and the Alton Towers Hotel – which control the fans in the air handling plant and the pumps for the hot water supply – have now been replaced in the rolling replacement programme.
The air handling plant has had nine of its 12 fan drives replaced with 22kW Commander SK drives, each with additional I/O modules for input from sensors around the facility.
The drives receive speed control signals (4—20mA) via the Trend building management system, with each unit controlling a 10m3/ sec capacity fan.
Meanwhi8le, for both hotels, domestic hot water is controlled by a series of pumps, arranged in two series of three (rotated as duty, assist and standby), and so far, one set of three drives has been replaced – in this case, with 15kW Affinity HVAC drives, each fitted with I/O and communications modules.
In the event of a power loss, control logic is maintained, so the system can be up and running again very quickly and the Affinity SmartCard allows for control programs to be stored and copied to multiple drives.
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Author
Brian Tinham
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