For more than a decade, the UK has been leading the way in the manufacture of energy-saving products that take technology to the heart of business and industry, reducing electricity bills and cutting carbon emissions.

Designed, sourced and manufactured in the UK for the past 13 years, Powerstar voltage optimisation system – the only solution in the world with a patent on its design – also prolongs the life of electrical equipment, allowing companies to operate at maximum efficiency.

Powerstar’s energy-saving capabilities have delivered an instant improvement to the ‘bottom line’ of many FTSE 100 leading companies, meaning they can reduce their impact on the environment while delivering a noticeable – in some cases, almost one-fifth – cut in their electricity bills.

The concept, as you may know, is straightforward. Voltage optimisation, as the name suggests, optimises and regulates the voltage entering a building, to closely match the requirements of onsite equipment and appliances. Voltage optimisation is an effective technology because often a higher voltage is being delivered than is required – the nominal UK voltage is 230V, while the average being delivered is 242V and can be more than 250V.

Powerstar systems address this variance, controlling the consumption of electricity by optimising the incoming voltage to around 220V, the level at which most equipment is designed to operate. This not only ensures a constant supply, but also withstands some electricity surges, which can ‘short’ a system and leave businesses, factories, offices and hotels in limbo while the problem is rectified and the power reconnected.

In addition to winning praise from clients including Asda, BT, npower and the NHS, Powerstar is bringing peace of mind and energy savings to FTSE company Whitbread, which takes commitment to its customers and to the environment very seriously via its Corporate Responsibility programme, Good Together.

The Powerstar system has been successfully installed in more than 400 Whitbread hotels and restaurants up and down the country, in a host of Costa Coffee, Brewers Fayre, Premier Inn, Taybarns and Beefeater Grill outlets, which between them serve more than 10 million customers every month.

Now Whitbread is raising a glass to the success of the installation, which has resulted in average electricity consumption savings of 12.35%, with average CO2 emission reductions of 12 tonnes. Chris George, Whitbread’s head of energy and environment, said: “The carbon savings are fantastic. It is the equivalent of removing the emissions of 24,000 UK households from the National Grid. A great result for our company, and the environment.”

Mr George added, “We’re serious about sustainability at Whitbread because we know it’s the right thing to do for the environment and it’s what our customers and our teams want.”

Powerstar’s engineers worked closely with Whitbread’s energy managers over a four-year period to draw up a schedule that best suited the company’s energy needs and its aims with regard to cutting carbon emissions.

Between them they devised plans for each site, evaluating and analysing each hospitality venue’s requirements to create individually tailored solutions.

In each case, the energy surveys and installations were carried out during business hours, while keeping disruption to guests and customers to a minimum.

Since the work was completed, Whitbread has saved thousands of pounds in electricity costs – and as energy prices continue to rise, the business will reap the rewards of its partnership with Powerstar.

Powerstar is designed, developed, sourced and manufactured in Sheffield, a Yorkshire city that for centuries has forged a reputation for reliability with its manufacturing processes.

Dr Alex Mardapittas, managing director of Powerstar, said, “We are an engineering company designing engineering solutions for all our customers. We have installed systems for many international hospitality companies across the UK and we are particularly proud to have successfully installed over 400 tailored systems for Whitbread”.

Powerstar is not resting on its laurels and was the first company in the world to market a fully electronically variable High Voltage (HV) transformer in the world – Powerstar HV MAX.

The system allows the replacement of old, inefficient transformers with a solution that combines the benefits of an amorphous core, super low-loss transformer with those of an electronic-dynamic voltage optimisation unit. Installation of this new HV optimisation technology can be expected to achieve average savings of 17%.

Powerstar systems come with a 15-year warranty and energy savings are 100% guaranteed.