Wireless Intelligent Energy control system reduces Pizza Hut's electricity bills by 28% saving in excess of £1m per year

Subject: RF-control system

Pizza Hut is the largest pizza restaurant chain in the world, with nearly 600 outlets in the UK.

Problem

• Each of Pizza Hut’s 580 UK restaurants is operational 16 hours a day. The company wanted to ensure each site was running as cost effectively as possible and selected Envision as a partner for solution implementation.
• Envision monitored a number of trial sites and discovered that the energy-use profiles were unusually high at night, even though the restaurants are shut for eight hours during this period. This was a clear indication that some systems were left running 24 hours a day.

Solution

• Envision reported there were 16 pieces of equipment which could be turned off at night.
• To ensure these energy savings were made, Envision installed an RF-control system from Intelligent Energy Solutions which automatically switches off all non-essential equipment.
• The system is activated and deactivated by the burglar alarm which is set every night. This means it doesn’t depend on staff having to manually switch everything off. Only essential equipment is left running when the restaurant is closed.
• When the burglar alarm is deactivated the following morning, all controlled equipment is enabled, allowing both automated and manual start up.
• As the system is wireless, the installation resulted in no disruption to Pizza Hut’s everyday operations.
  

Results

• From the day the Intelligent Energy system was installed, the Pizza Hut trial sites saved 42% electricity at night and 22% during the day. The daytime savings were due to staff being more aware that they should turn equipment off when it isn’t needed.
• Return on investment is just 14 months and Pizza Hut now plans to roll the system out to all its sites, with projected savings of £1 million a year and a reduction of 26,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.