For pubs, restaurants, and hotels, energy bills are one of the most significant and fastest-growing overheads. While managers often focus on front-of-house lighting, kitchen appliances, and general heating, one of the biggest silent energy hogs is sitting right beneath their feet: the cellar.
Maintaining a cellar at a constant, chilled temperature (usually around 11°C to 13°C) is non-negotiable for the quality of cask ales, keg beers, and wines. However, traditional mechanical cellar cooling systems are incredibly energy-intensive, often running 24/7 regardless of the weather outside.
If you are looking to cut your carbon footprint and reduce overheads, optimizing your cellar cooling is one of the fastest routes to significant savings.
Best Practices for a More Efficient Cellar
Before looking at technological upgrades, ensure your cellar is fundamentally set up to retain the cold. Here are three immediate steps you can take:
Insulate the Pipework: Uninsulated coolant pipes absorb heat from the surrounding air, making the compressor work much harder. Wrapping pipes in high-quality thermal insulation is a cheap, quick win.
Manage the Doors: It sounds simple, but cellar doors are frequently left propped open during deliveries or busy shifts. Every minute the door is open, expensive chilled air escapes and warm air rushes in. Install heavy-duty draft excluders and automatic door closers.
Keep Heat-Generating Equipment Out: Freezers, ice machines, and uninsulated hot water pipes have no place in a cooling cellar. They constantly fight your cooling system, driving up electricity usage.
The Game-Changer: “Free Air Cooling”
Even with a perfectly insulated cellar, traditional mechanical cooling systems are fundamentally inefficient during the colder months. When the temperature outside drops below the target temperature of your cellar, your mechanical cooling system is still running, wasting expensive electricity to do a job that nature could do for free.
This is where SavaWatt’s SavaAir Cellar Energy Management system comes in.
Instead of relying solely on expensive, power-hungry compressors, SavaAir uses “Free Air Cooling” technology.
How it Works: Based on our patented algorithms, the SavaAir system constantly monitors both the internal cellar temperature and the external ambient air temperature.
The Bypass: When the outside air is cooler than the air inside the cellar, the SavaAir system automatically overrides your power-heavy mechanical cooling system. It brings in the filtered, naturally chilled outside air to cool the room instead.
The Results: By letting nature do the heavy lifting during autumn, winter, and cool nights, this simple but highly effective method can reduce cellar running costs by up to 50% under the right conditions.
The SavaAir system provides detailed energy consumption data and live cellar temperature reports through a dedicated web portal. For a comprehensive energy-saving solution, the system can be expanded to integrate with python and post-mix coolers, delivering real-time analytics and optimization across your entire beverage cooling setup.
A Smarter Approach to Building Efficiency
Taking control of your cellar is just the beginning. At SavaWatt Controls, we view every building as having its own unique sustainability journey. Beyond cellar cooling, we help businesses optimise their entire electrical infrastructure.
For instance, our SavaPower Voltage Optimisation systems can reduce your general building electric bills by up to 18%, while our SavaPlug and savacontrol units target the specific energy waste of A/C motors and refrigeration equipment. We’ve successfully implemented these energy-efficient technologies for major clients, from breweries and leisure centers to Cardiff Council and the British Antarctic Survey.
Ready to stop paying for unnecessary cooling? Contact the SavaWatt team today to learn how the SavaAir system can leverage free air cooling to drastically cut your hospitality energy bills.
