POWER October 2020 - 16

O&M
Long Duration Meets
Refrigeration: Managing
Demand with Thermal
Energy Storage
Managing demand on the power grid,
at best a never-ending balancing act between
generation and load, has become
an increasingly complex and challenging
responsibility. Along with the urgent
need to reduce carbon-based energy
generation, consumer demand for energy
is continuously growing and shifting.
As the energy landscape evolves,
power providers across the country,
from utilities to retail energy providers,
are facing a combination of factors that
present significant challenges.
New distributed energy resources,
or DERs, are being developed and integrated
at an ever-increasing pace, with
electric vehicles and renewable generation
assets (and their variability) being
brought online faster than previously
predicted. Indeed, solar photovoltaic
and onshore wind are now the cheapest
sources of new-build generation for
at least two-thirds of the global population,
according to Bloomberg New Energy
Finance (BNEF).
Despite the impacts on new project
deployments and the renewables supply
chain due to the COVID-19 pandemic,
renewable capacity additions this
year are set to total 167 GW globally,
according to the International Energy
Agency's Renewable Energy Market
Update report. Overall global renewable
power capacity is expanding and will
grow by 6% in 2020.
All these factors make it more challenging
for utilities to meet and manage
demand when and where it is needed.
This is particularly true when considering
food businesses with commercial and
industrial (C&I) refrigerated facilities (Figure
1), which have the highest demand
per square foot of any industrial load.
C&I refrigeration sites also consume
more energy from the grid than any
other usage category other than lighting.
Significantly, energy often accounts for
up to 70% of the total electric bill for C&I
cold storage companies.
This food supply sector, also referred
to as the " cold chain, " is designated as
critical infrastructure and is of vital importance-particularly
during the type of
public health emergency the world has
16
1. Commercial and industrial (C&I) refrigerated facilities that serve food businesses have the
highest power demand per square foot of any industrial load. These C&I refrigeration sites also
consume more electricity from the grid than any usage category, other than lighting. Courtesy:
Viking Cold Solutions
faced over the past several months, and
will continue to face until the pandemic
is under control.
C&I Demand Management
There are several factors that come into
play when managing C&I demand, such
as time of use, capacity, transmission,
and distribution, all of which have an effect
on the total cost of electricity. Variable
generation resources such as wind
and solar have made grid demand management
even more difficult.
C&I demand reduction programs have
been one effective method to help manage
peak demand while DERs continue
to grow as an integral part of the demand
equation. Each DER provides either flexibility
to better manage peak demand
periods, or efficiency to lower overall
consumption, but few technologies can
provide both. Some projects combine
DERs to maximize results from demand
management programs.
As outlined above, one crucial C&I
category that has been difficult to adequately
address with traditional demand
management tools is refrigerated
and cold storage facilities. These facilities
(Figure 2) store food and run their
refrigeration systems nearly non-stop
to minimize temperature variations and
protect the food. They include thousands
of large frozen food warehouses
(from 5,000 to more than 200,000
square feet) owned by food processing
companies, food service
distributors,
large grocery chains, food banks, and
third-party logistics providers, as well as
hundreds of thousands of walk-in freezers
(from 100 square feet to more than
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1,000 square feet) found inside grocery
stores, schools, hotels, and restaurants.
Locations with refrigeration can
benefit significantly from smarter energy
use. As demand management
techniques and programs have developed,
C&I refrigeration facilities have
often been targeted. The results, however,
have been limited due to their continuous
energy demands and sensitivity
to temperature fluctuations.
When included in demand response
programs, for example, these facilities
are often unable to respond to the utility
or grid operator notice for demand reduction.
Where locations permit, a few cold
storage facilities have taken advantage
of their large rooftops by adding solar
panels. However, without an on-site storage
resource that can adequately offset
demand requirements of
refrigeration
2. Facilities that store food need to run their
refrigeration systems almost non-stop to minimize
temperature variations and protect the
food. Thermal energy storage (TES) systems
allow for more efficient use of energy within
the facility, giving building owners the benefits
of lower energy costs. Courtesy: Viking
Cold Solutions
POWER | October 2020

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POWER October 2020

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