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Fifty McDonald’s restaurants across the UK are now saving 50 per cent on power bills for kitchen extractor fans with the help of ABB drives.

'We were updating old equipment and realised we could reduce our carbon footprint by making large fans run more slowly,' said Dave Holden, project manager of Restaurant Services for McDonalds.

'Variable speed control was implemented on fan units with large 5.5kW motors. These now draw about 2kW for most of the time, but have the capacity to boost extract volumes significantly at busy times,' he added.

'Variable speed control gives us the extraction volumes we need while cutting energy use. We will also change our specifications to request variable speed control when new equipment is purchased.'

McDonalds was hoping to see 40 per cent energy savings and less wear and tear on the fan, including soft start-up. ABB Drives Alliance member, Inverter Drive Systems (IDS) in Nottingham were asked to look at the application and come up with the correct drive.

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