The “Aalborg Stor­center” is open seven days a week. The 75 stores in this shop­ping center in Denmark’s fourth-largest city attract over six million customers annu­ally. The building, which has 27,000 square meters of floor space, needs opti­mized air condi­tioning throughout the year. Until now, that meant high energy costs. As a result, Claus Münster of ATP Real Estate, the shop­ping center’s owner, was pleased to accept an invi­ta­tion to a customer event held by ebm-papst and its instal­la­tion partner Kemp & Lauritzen. The topic: poten­tial savings from a retrofit.

75 stores on 27,000 square meters of floor space attract over six million customers annu­ally. They expect opti­mized air condi­tioning.

eebm-papst fore­cast signif­i­cant savings from the replace­ment of the 102 old fans, which had been made in 1996, the year the shop­ping center was built. Münster decided to perform a live test. For a week, an EC fan ran in the Aalborg Stor­center along­side the old fans. The result of the compar­ison: savings of 50 percent. “Once he’d seen it with his own eyes, Claus Münster was completely convinced,” recalls Niels Knokgård, Marketing Manager at ebm-papst Denmark. Now the retrofit needed to happen quickly. The fans were replaced from August to October, after the summer vaca­tion and in time for the Christmas shop­ping season.

Lower costs, better condi­tions inside

“The only thing that bothers me is that we didn’t do it sooner,” says Münster today. “Now we’re saving 20,000 kilo­watt-hours every month.” That means savings of 25,000 euros per year. Not only are the new fans more econom­ical, they also improve condi­tions inside by circu­lating the air better. And they’re quieter than their prede­ces­sors. ebm-papst replaced one of the 102 fans with one that is two sizes larger to make an even better fit with the air pres­sure and air flow.

50% of the energy costs can be saved through the replace­ment of the fans.

The venti­lation system draws in fresh air from the building’s roof and mixes it with the warm air from inside the shop­ping center, so the cold air from outside needs less warming. Store oper­a­tors can decide for them­selves how warm it should be in their shops. For example, elec­tronics stores in which the air is heated up by PCs, tele­vi­sions and cell phones, can reduce their temper­a­ture with a small system in the store while clothing stores can keep their rooms warmer to make trying on clothes more pleasant. The facility manage­ment system controls the fan speeds. “The old fans had very inef­fi­cient speed control,” says Münster. “In the new fans, it’s already built in. That makes them much more easily and precisely adjustable.”