Over the next few weeks, a consortium of municipal utilities in
California will begin retrofitting government offices and
commercial properties with systems that use ice made at night to replace
air-conditioning during the day. It's part of a pilot program for the
devices, which are built by Windsor, CO-based Ice Energy. If
widely deployed, they could reduce fuel consumption by utilities by up
to 30 percent and put off the need for new power plants.
The first devices will be installed on about two dozen city-owned buildings in Glendale, CA, under the plan being coordinated by the Southern California Public Power Authority. Over the next two years, the 11 participating utilities will install 1,500 of the devices, providing a total of 53 megawatts of energy storage to relieve strain on the region's electrical grid. The project is the first large-scale implementation of Ice Energy's technology.
Each Ice Energy device is designed to make ice overnight, when demand for electricity is low, using a high-efficiency compressor to freeze 450 gallons of water. Around midday, the cooling mode kicks in, and the device shuts off the building's regular air conditioner for a six-hour cycle. It pipes a stream of coolant from the slowly melting block of ice to an evaporator coil installed within the building's heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning blower system. Once the ice is melted, the air conditioner returns to normal operation. Brian Parsonnet, Ice Energy's chief technology officer, says the technology can cut a building's power consumption by 95 percent during peak hours on the hottest days.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Technology Review: Using Ice to Cool Down the Grid
Author: David Richardson
