The Shedd Has The Hardest Working Fish In America
By JoshMogerman in News on Feb 9, 2013 10:00PM
The Shedd is getting the most out of their fishies these days. Instead of floating about lazily, they are cranking out beer and babies left and right. And clearly that is paying off with news that they reclaimed the national attendance crown, pulling in more guests than any other aquarium last year.
It takes a lot of electricity to accommodate all those guests, not to mention power the pumps and life support systems to keep 1500 species swimming happily in 5,000,000 gallons of water. But in this area, they are working harder too (or smarter anyway), with the announcement that the aquarium will slash its energy consumption in half in the next seven years. Nearly 1/5 of the savings come from switching over to modern LED light bulbs. Cutting-edge energy storage tools and smart automation of systems will do a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes. The efficiency project was developed, in part, with the City of Chicago, which has been heavily embracing energy-saving projects to save cash, reduce pollution and make the city more competitive.
So, the aquarium is getting a heck of a lot more out of their resident swimmers and electric bills. What else should they be efficient-izing?