Case studies

St Helena Winery has installed a chilled water plant complete with two heat exchangers. The new equipment is making efficiency gains by reusing the waste energy generated by the refrigeration system, and it also provides improved temperature control during the fermentation process.

This project supports St Helena's desire to align their business with sustainable practises.

This farm installed a heat exchange system - it extracts the heat from the waste water and uses it to pre-warm the incoming water in the dairy shed. It reduces energy use as less energy is needed to heat each new batch of water to the 85 degrees celsius required for the next wash.

Monitoring has shown that the system is on target to achieve an annual energy saving of 30%. That equates to a cut in CO2 emissions of about one tonne a year.

Canterbury Laundry Service replaced two steam powered dryers with LPG direct fired dryers and cut its annual energy costs by $46,000.

The move also cut the company's CO2 emissions and boosted its operating capacity.

During the design phase of Waitakere Hospital a design audit was undertaken to ensure that the new facilities were low-energy environments. Adjustments were made to the design so that the buildings made the most of natural ventilation, insulation and natural lighting levels were increased as well as the use of other energy efficient technologies.