Some in California seek ice to ease crunch

[skids]

I found this rather poorly promulgated AP article while looking into a company I stumbled across while answering some questions on another thread.

August 10, 2006

LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 City and utility officials throughout Southern California are eyeing a new system that relies on ice to store energy for air conditioners as a possible way to cut peak commercial consumption and reduce the threat of crippling blackouts.

...

The system developed by Ice Energy®Inc. consists of a large plastic attachment for commercial air conditioning units that is filled with water, frozen overnight then used to cool refrigerant during the day.

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The new hardware costs about $10,500 and weights about 5,000 pounds when filled with water. There can be an additional retrofitting cost of as much as $10,000 for existing buildings and a minimum $750 cost for new construction, the company said. A residential model is currently being tested by the company.

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The incentives include a special rate structure that will benefit businesses by dropping their cost for power during off-peak hours from 11 cents to 3 cents a kilowatt. The city will also issue credits of as much as $21,000.

http://www.happynews.com/news/8122006/some-in-calif-seek-ice-to-ease-crunch.htm

Now that may just sound like a common-sense idea and indeed there are entire shopping malls that have custom designed systems that do just this, this product, and the planned residential system, just adding the advantage of mass production and retrofitting. The implications are much larger though, than the product may seem.

While solar power generally tends to be available right when you need AC, one of the primary problems with utilizing wind power is storing that power when more of it is produced than needed. If a system like this were to take signals from the power company, a power company could route power into people's ice storage systems when there is excess wind capacity. In a home setup, whenever a microturbine is generating more power than the household is using, it could be dumped into chilling the ice storage unit.

Even when the electricity is being generated by fossil fuels this system is a winner -- it saves on both ends, if the ice is frozen at night. Cooler nighttime air makes both the refrigration process and the electricity generation process at the power plant more efficient.

A big tank of ice water is a heck of a lot cheaper than batteries, flywheels, or hydrogen fuel cells per unit of energy stored.

Ponder that.

[jpak]

1. Thanks for posting this

n/t

[mccoyn]

2. Shh, don't tell anyone, but this is solar power.

The heat pumps used by air conditioners and this system are ineffecient. The only reason this scheme pays off is that the ambient temperature changes daily. Essentially, you have an ineffecient storage mechanism coupled with an elaborate power generation system, making something that doesn't seem so ineffecient.

I imagine this system is effecient only when it is charged at night and discharged during the warmer day. It won't be able to effeciently provide power at night.