UNDERSTANDING ENERGY MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC SWIMMING POOLS

Abstract

Utilities costs constitute a very large component of the operating expenditure of a swimming pool. For public swimming pools, the cost can take up to 40% of its total recurrent expenditure. Excluding town gas service, electricity bills chalk up about 84% of the total utilities cost. Cost of water consumption is about 16% of the bill. It is not likely for energy cost to be cheaper in the future given the current world situation and global concern for energy management. Hence, pool managers need to understand the concept of energy management to improve operational efficiency and minimize wastage. At present, there are no established guidelines to benchmark the operational efficiency of the swimming pool. Utilities bills, the only lag indicator of cost, provide a month-on-month comparison, which is not at all meaningful. This study aims to raise the awareness of pool managers and to equip them with a set of performance indicators to assess their operational efficiency. Six public swimming complexes were selected for the study. Data loggers were deployed to register the energy consumption of the key components in the swimming complexes. Review of contemporary literature was also made to elicit best practice in pool management, taking cognizance of their environmental and operational differences. As local conditions differ greatly both in design and operations from the performance indicators advanced in the best practice, they could only serve as a reference. It may be necessary to adapt, modify and if necessary to develop new attributes to suit local conditions and needs. Given the very small sample size and the technical difficulties encountered in mining the data, the acquired information cannot be taken as the basis for benchmarking. At its very best, this study, which covers the relationship of energy consumption with respect to the spatial and volumetric dimensions of the swimming pools can only provide as a backdrop to kick-start the journey towards the realization of the achieving a local standard. The acceptance of a local index and standard can only come about through years of research, data collection and collaboration of pool operators.