The air compressor in a typical domestic sewage treatment system is running 100% of the time, 365 days a year. This means that while they are typically between 40W-100W the energy and associated costs can add up to a significant amount over the course of a year, well in excess of the cost of a new air pump within a short period of time.

In this video we look at five air pumps from leading manufacturers, all at the comparable 80 litres per second air flow level and using a readily available inexpensive domestic power meter, we log and compare the energy readings.

Results from the testing show that there is a wide range of different efficiencies between the most efficient (FujiMAC RII80) and the least efficient (Medo LA80B) which translates into hundreds of pounds of difference in cost per year. For users who are off-grid, then while renewable electricity is 'free', minimising an appliance such as this will allow your energy budget to be used on other electrical devices.  

There are of course a number of other important considerations, not least the difference in performance of each air pump at different pressures / depths, so it is not as simple as swapping one pump out for another.

At the time of writing, electricity costs are highly volatile with a government cap in place for a number of months, hence we have listed the running costs at various unit-prices to give an indication of how this might develop over time.

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