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California utility augments 1,800 air conditioning units with “ice battery”
A Santa Barbara-based company called Ice Energy has partnered with NRG Energy to deliver 1,800 “ice batteries” to commercial and industrial buildings served by electric utility Southern California Edison (SCE). The units are expected to reduce air conditioning bills by up to 40 percent and eliminate 200,000 tons of CO2 over the next 20 years.
Ice Energy has been building ice-based cooling systems since the early 2000s. Much like pumped storage or compressed air “batteries,” Ice Energy essentially stores electricity by drawing power from the grid at non-peak times to freeze water in a special container. Then at peak times, when the cost of electricity is high and grid operators are struggling to keep up with demand, Ice Energy’s systems kick in and use that block of ice to cool the space that the air conditioning unit normally serves.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @01:29AM (2 children)
Minus: Lower efficiency due to the usage of storage mechanism.
Plus: Greater efficiency at night time due to generators operating at a higher capacity (i.e., higher efficiency)
Plus: Alleviating daytime peak load demand.
Minus: Added cost of distributed installation/maintenance.
So we will just to have to try and see how they will sum out in the real world.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday May 07 2017, @03:22AM (1 child)
Sorry if I was too long-winded. You left out one point: for the same initial and final indoor temperatures, it takes less energy to run an air conditioner when the outside temperature is cool rather than hot (a plus). I left out a related point that I meant to make: normally we don't cool buildings below the freezing point of water. Theoretically, we expect to use more energy if we make ice then melt that ice to cool a room to a comfortable temperature than to just cool the room directly to that same temperature (a minus).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_efficiency#Carnot_efficiency [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @04:09AM
Not long-winded, I was just summarizing the factors brought up. And the point(s) you elaborated would be included in the reduced efficiency due to the storage mechanism.
And I am sure there are other factors not mentioned.