Posted to News on 29th Apr 2025, 13:00
NORD ECO service uncovers savings potential at airports
To support airports in designing energy-efficient baggage handling systems, NORD DRIVESYSTEMS offers the NORD ECO service, which it says will make a significant contribution to achieving the climate targets in this sector.
NORD is a system supplier of innovative drive solutions for more than 100 industries. With the NORD ECO service, the drive specialist has already helped many companies to improve their system's performance and energy efficiency through modernisation and to reduce the variants of the components used.
"Baggage handling systems often offer potential for savings, especially when considering the drive technology", reports Jorg Niermann, Head of Marketing at NORD DRIVESYSTEMS. "We offer our NORD ECO service to optimise existing installations and to find the best drive solution."
The NORD ECO box conducts comprehensive measurements over a period of at least two weeks. Based on permanent loads, load peaks or irregular conditions, it becomes clear whether a system's dimensions match the requirements of the respective application. "We often encounter drive systems that are clearly overdimensioned for the corresponding application, and so we develop a new solution", Niermann adds.
The installation of an alternative system is followed by a comparative measurement with a final analysis. "In conclusion, the NORD ECO process achieves lower energy consumption and costs as well as reduced CO2 emissions." This allowed NORD to reveal significant savings potential for the drive systems in baggage handling systems of different airports and to implement alternative solutions.
Savings potential in numbers
At an airport that was already using an energy-efficient drive concept with IE3 motor, the measurement with the NORD ECO service concluded that almost 20 % of energy could be saved by using a DuoDrive solution with IE5+ motor and a decentralised NORDAC LINK frequency inverter. After a comparative measurement of both systems over a period of a little more than a year, it was possible to finally determine a savings potential of 590 kWh and 396 kg CO2.
Airports that used a DuoDrive solution with a NORD IE5+ motor in their baggage handling systems instead of drive systems with an IE1 motor were able to achieve a savings potential of up to 48 %, reducing the application's annual CO2 emissions by up to 144 kg in calculation. The DuoDrive's low operating temperatures and the option for variant reduction also proved to be beneficial. The additional costs for more efficient drive systems are quickly amortised thanks to government funding.
