Pump manufacturers agree energy labelling

Co-operation the name of the game as pump manufacturers agree energy labelling.

Wilo, along with the other leading European pump manufacturers, has through an agreement brokered by Europump, the European Pump Manufacturers Association, agreed to a standardised energy labelling policy that will indicate to purchasers the energy consumption of their products.

The labels, very much like the energy efficiency labelling we have all become familiar with on refrigerators and freezers, will show an energy efficiency rating between A and G, with A using the least energy and G the most.

The traditional standard circulator pump installed in millions of homes across Europe will come in band E, because it runs at a fixed speed, all day - for 24 hours each day, whatever the heating or hot water requirements of the home.

Wilo has taken a lead in the design and development of pumps that only operate when they need to, reducing the energy consumption considerably and many of Wilo's products will feature in the higher bandings of the new standard.

It's Stratos and Stratos-ECO pumps will already qualify for A rating, whilst the company's standard pumps will be classified in the C banding and above.

Wilo UK managing director Stuart Herritty says the agreement is good for the UK marketplace and good for the environment: "With the huge effort that has gone into bringing in the new Building Regulations Part 'L' here in England and Wales, everyone in the domestic heating sector has become increasingly aware of the need to be more energy efficient.

It's important that we take a look at every component of a heating system and try to find energy savings and ways of reducing CO2 emissions.

About 15% of the electric power consumed by an average household is used to drive the circulation pump in their heating system.

That's not an insignificant proportion of household energy usage and anything we can do to reduce that needs to be looked at closely.

"At Wilo we have always been at the leading edge of pumping technology development and we will have more Class A pumps available during the course of 2005 to meet the demand for higher efficiency circulators in UK homes.

Our new generation of pumps powered by DC motors and featuring electronic commutation have resulted in extremely efficient wet-running pumps being available already and we are proud that Wilo developed the first ever what will now be 'A rated' pump, back in 2001".

At the present time, the pumps in heating systems consume around the same amount of energy per year as all the washing machines in the European Union.

Estimates indicate that the annual electricity consumption in Europe could be reduced by the use of energy-saving pumps by 44TWh by the year 2020 which would also reduce the CO2 emissions by 17.6 million tonnes.

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