The Challenge

With a deep focus on energy savings and carbon reduction initiatives over the past three years, the Two Oceans Aquarium at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town has become a leader in optimising energy consumption. Located in the historic heart of a working harbour, the aquarium is an institution that understands the importance of energy efficiency, and as such, has always endeavoured to inspire through action.

Goals:

• Reduce energy costs
• Optimise already existing infrastructure
• Replace equipment to improve energy consumption

The Results

• Replacement of many of the smaller pumps with more energy-efficient, variable speed models, which only use a third of the power of older models.
• Reduced the size of one of the major sumps, which meant that the aquarium only needs four heaters (4kW), instead of the eight that were previously in use.
• Shut off chilling/heating for the open air restaurants where temperatures could not be effectively controlled. The restaurant now only uses circulating air for this purpose.
• Installed thermal conducting gel units in the freezer that switch on the chillers only when the temperature of the product begins to increase, rather than responding to air temperature.
• Disconnected electrical geysers feeding non-essential hot taps.
• Reduce carbon emissions by an effective 11,52 tons of CO2 per year.
• The aquarium has further upgraded to a 5 kWp solar system.