Multiple benefits lead to ice storage blossoming in New York City commercial buildings

February 5, 2015

According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, commercial buildings contribute to nearly 20 percent of the country's annual energy consumption. Two thirds of this energy consumption is performed by retail buildings and office buildings for temperature control, a cost that ramps up when electricity is at its most expensive. A long list of commercial buildings in New York City, businesses challenged by space issues inherent to operating facilities in a densely packed cityscape, have turned to ice storage as a means of minimizing costs and meeting green government regulations. Despite being an underreported energy storage solution, ice-based solutions have proven effective for some of the largest brands in the Big Apple.

Multiple high rises rely on IceBanks
Some of the largest brands of American have deployed thermal ice storage for their NYC offices. The Bank of America tower, for example, uses a series of tanks to freeze ice during the nighttime, when both the demand for and the cost of electricity are both at their lowest, said Solaripedia. The ice created and stored overnight is melted during the day and used to keep the entire building at a comfortable temperature. At the same time, the use of melted ice to maintain a controlled climate reduces the need to consume power during periods of peak loads.

A similar technology is utilized by the Credit Suisse headquarters, located in Manhattan's Metropolitan Life tower, according to The Washington Post. The source noted that by offsetting peak demand with ice storage, the company was able to reduce enough of the pollution generated during peak demand periods to equal the impact of planting nearly 2 million trees. The building takes advantage of 64 ice-banks to reduce daily peak demand period energy use by 900 kW and 2.16 million kW/h per year. Other well known office buildings that utilize similar ice-based storage technology include Rockefeller Center, 1155 Ave of the Americas and the Morgan Stanley building.

Companies use energy storage to comply with EPA rulings
Goldman Sachs Group, another major American corporation whose New York facility benefits from thermal energy storage, operates 92 ice-banks, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. The company decided to invest in ice storage as a means of improving operating efficiency and reducing the building's carbon footprint, anticipating that stricter regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency are around the corner. Thanks to solutions like ice storage and other strategies to go green, the Goldman Sachs Group building runs 30 percent more efficiently than the average office building. The company estimated that these measures helped save over $50,000 per month during the summer season.

Thermal storage offers a cost-effective solution
The New York Times pointed out that one of the major reasons that building owners prefer ice storage over other forms of energy storage is due to comparative savings. Other forms of storage technology, like batteries, are most effective when incorporated into highly specialized roles in grid management strategies like making energy flow from a wind farm more consistent. Ice storage, on the other hand, is far more cost-effective when it comes to maximizing the amount of cooling a facility can store during off-peak periods and the space constraints of office facilities and other types of skyscrapers common to urban environments. Capable of being stored on roofs, in basements or on cooling floors positioned between offices, this flexibility has helped made ice storage the energy storage solution of choice of office buildings all across New York City.