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Solar powered ammonia cooling for California cold store

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2009-06-04 - ammonia21.com
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A new cold storage facility in California features solar powered ammonia cooling whereby the refrigeration control system is integrated with that of the solar panels to allow for the frequency on the variable-speed drives of each compressor to adjust and fully profit from the power generated by the solar panels.
Solar powered ammonia cooling for California cold store
Enabled by a $225,000 financial incentive from San Diego Gas & Electric through the power company’s Sustainable Communities Program promoting energy efficient features, solar powered ammonia refrigeration technology provides for the cooling needs of a 134,511 square foot cold storage facility since March 2009 in San Diego County, California. According to C&L Refrigeration, the company called in to deal with refrigeration challenges, the building design is expected to cut energy costs by 75%.

The facility features:
  • High efficiency ammonia screw compressors
     
  • 8 evaporators at 420,000 Btuh or 35 tons each installed on the roof: Dedicated ‘penthouses’ were designed on the roof for the evaporators. Installing them on the roof allowed easy access for maintainance.
     
  • Integrated refrigeration and solar panel control systems: By adjusting the frequency on variable speed drives of each compressor, the refrigeration output is lowered to meet the available power from the solar panels during the hottest part of the day when energy is most expensive.
     
  • Reduced heat load to attain a 75% more efficient building: To achieve this, the ceiling is 60-feet high, 25 feet taller than a typical cold storage facility. “Going vertical was very important, because there’s the same square footage on the roof but more storage space inside,” says Tom Dosch P.E., C&L project engineer. “Because the roof is the biggest source of heat and 90 percent of a cold storage facility’s energy bill comes from the refrigeration, having more storage without increasing the size of the roof reduces the overall power needs.”
Next steps

Innovative Cold Storage Enterprises Inc. (ICE), for which the facility was built operates another older cold storage building to which the new facility will be compared in terms of energy use. The new building is expected to store four times as much product at half the cost of ICE’s first building and will serve as a model for future buildings. Moreover, the facility is awaiting to attain gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) program.




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2009-06-21 19:04:09 - Sergei Khoudiachov
I support renewable energy. However, it is very expensive. They have got huge incentives from the utility. Probably, even with this incentives, this project has several years payback. They expect to get gold certification for design of this building. However, a design of refrigeration plant is initial step to real energy savings. Efficient operation of the refrigeration plant is ultimated goal in energy saving process. Optimization of the refrigeration plant operation can give us a few months payback(sometimes it is free). Typically, this payback is 10-20 times shorter than payback of any capital investment. Didn't find any word about efficient operation.
2009-06-04 17:20:59 - Nicholas Cox
I proposed this concept some 15 years ago and it was dismissed as science fiction, nice to see reality catching up at last!











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