Planning ahead for the party: An analogy for commercial air conditioning
June 21, 2016
There's nothing worse during the summer than being at a party with an unrefreshing cool beverage. With the Fourth of July nearing, thousands of companies and families will be planning ahead for their gatherings and reunions by ensuring guests will have comfortable surroundings with proper amenities and by pre-purchasing supplies of food, beverages, and ice to keep supplies cold in bulk quantities to make sure the attendees will be comfortable. Is your commercial building doing the same pre planning that can save money and improve comfort?
The ice storage dilemma
Here's the scenario: you have 50 guests at your party and you need one pound of ice per person, for example. It doesn't make sense to fill ice trays as they're arriving, right? You wouldn't be able to quickly generate enough ice cubes to keep everyone's drinks cool. The well-prepared picnic planners would buy the ice and other picnic supplies ahead of time to ensure they'd have enough supplies before the guests arrive.
Commercial buildings operate much in the same way because building operators understand that "guests" or workers going to "attend the party" or are going to arrive for their workday. Except instead of one pound of ice per person building operators need to provide cooling for each person, which is the equivalent of 150 to 300 pounds of ice each. Yet, the standard practice is to wait until everyone is walking into the building to create the cooling. Not only is this practice of instantaneous cooling happening in your building but all the buildings in your community are drawing power instantaneously which puts a strain on the grid, especially during summer peak demand periods.
A facility manager could pay two to three times more for the building's cooling load during a hot summer day than at night. This is because the grid is flooded with demand for air-conditioning. To maintain a sufficient supply of electricity to meet peak demand, utilities bring highly-pollutant peaking power plants online that emit emissions at a much higher rate than normal. The costs for this standby power is recouped by the utilities by means of demand charges, which can make up to 70% of electricity costs. (Demand charges are denoted as KW on the utility bill.)
There's a way to reduce peak demand, though. It's called: Ice Storage. It's like buying ice before the party, just a hundred times smarter.
How ice storage helps
If gas was priced at $3.29 during the day and $1.29 at night, when would you fill up your car? It's a no-brainer - when it's more affordable. Air conditioning works much in the same way.
Ice Storage allows a building to reduce peak demand by shifting daytime energy usage to nighttime . Cooling is stored in the form of ice until the morning, when the ice melts to deliver a cooling load for the entire building.
Some utility operators will even pay commercial building users to reduce energy usage during the day through demand response programs. That would be like a grocer paying you to take the ice before the party.
Not only does this make financial sense, (Why pay more for expensive energy when you don't have to?) - but it counts as being environmentally friendly as well. At night, ice storage can store renewable wind energy which mainly blows at night. Have solar? Cooling stored ahead of time can kick on when the sun isn't shining.
According to the U.S. Green Building Council, Ice Storage directly contributed to the headquarters for the Hewlett Foundation becoming the first LEED Gold-certified building in California, and just the fifth in the U.S. Ice Storage can provide massive monthly savings for schools too. St Lucie school district saves $5 million in utility costs. At the JCPenney headquarters Ice Storage provided long lasting benefits for 25 years even as utility rates changed.
So as you look to improve occupant comfort while curbing energy costs this summer start researching Ice Storage. It may be the best investment you make all year. Remember no one wants to show up to a building that's warmer inside than the outside air. Planning ahead could help avert a lot of headaches, from maintenance costs to dissatisfied occupants. For aging chillers, Ice Storage is proven to be the reliable solution to providing comfortable cool air without breaking the bank or the environment.
