Delivering refrigerated goods from suppliers to buyers or ports is a key part of many businesses’ supply chains. Cold storage and logistic businesses face some unique challenges in getting this done, such as constantly monitoring temperatures and managing seasonal temperature changes.
These challenges also allow cold storage businesses to reap the benefits from energy management and efficiency measures that can drive down energy costs.
Looking for ways to better manage energy and reduce costs, one cold storage and logistics business in South Australia began working with Flow Power.
After analysing their data, Flow Power’s engineers were able to find significant savings on their annual energy costs by switching to wholesale energy and utilising demand response.
Demand response rewards businesses for changing the way they use power. By using power when there is less demand on the energy grid, businesses can avoid high energy rates and increased tariffs. This can be as simple as changing when they use power, or reducing power usage for a short period of time when demand peaks.
For cold storage businesses, demand response can be implemented by simply pre-cooling the refrigerated storage and allowing a partial shut down of compressors for a short period of time.
Large refrigerators can maintain a freezing temperature for hours due to thermal mass, which allows cold storage businesses to engage in demand response with no impact to the product or business operations.
Simply reducing energy use by 50% over just five hours on one day in January, could have saved this business approximately $20,000 on their annual energy costs.
Monitoring the the Market
Flow Power has engineers constantly monitoring the energy market. If an event is predicted, an alert is sent out to customers to give them time to make any necessary changes to their energy use. This process can also be automated.
Demand response is not only a great way to save on energy costs, it also supports the energy grid and helps prevent blackouts. That’s why the South Australian Government is backing Flow Power’s ‘Building Intelligent Demand Response’ program, which aims to advance the use of demand response and distributed energy resources by providing funding for set-up costs to eligible SA businesses.
To find out more about wholesale energy and how your business could benefit from demand response, visit the Flow Power website.