Ice Cub

I've actually been to their offices and talked to them....its an electrical load shifting strategy

I have suggested the same principle for air conditioning electric vehicles - generate a cold sink (a mass of material of high specific heat) during the night charging period and draw on it during the day, thus saving the battery for motive power. The same principle may be used for heating the vehicle in the winter.

have you ever calculated the energy required to drag that around? the returns diminish with every pound

This idea was done in the 20s-30s, mainly for large intermittent human occupations like theaters. It allowed a much smaller refrigeration unit, that froze water in large tanks located in the basement. Some of these are still operational.

Humans emit lots of heat, both sensible, and latent.

A ton of refrigeration (commonly abbreviated as TR) is a unit of power used in some countries (especially in North America) to describe the heat-extraction capacity of refrigeration and air conditioning equipment. It is defined as the heat of fusionabsorbed by melting 1 short ton (2,000 lb; 0.893 long tons; 0.907 t) of pure ice at 0 °C (32 °F) in 24 hours.^[1][2] It is equivalent to the consumption of one ton of ice per day and originated during the transition from stored natural ice to mechanical refrigeration.

The JRT (Japanese Refrigeration Ton) is similar, but based on a metric tonne (2204 lb) of ice/water.)

I don't believe this would save any energy, but merely shift the electrical load from day to night...also don't believe it would last 6 hrs....in any case the ability to cool would diminish as the heat load increased throughout the day which peaks at about 4:00 pm...add to that the costs, both initially and maintenance and repair, and you have a higher cost of ownership, a more complex system adding to longer troubleshooting times and costlier repairs....Now this probably works for the utilities as it's intended, but if the maintenance and repair is the responsibility of the equipment user or you have to call the utility( god forbid) to do the repair, well I see a problem...and if the cooling diminishes in the afternoon, you're going to have some unhappy people, in fact you're going to have to deal with very nasty feedback, which throws the service personnel under the bus, which will make servicing these accounts unpopular and difficult....I'd have to see it in operation over a period of time to be a believer...

it augments an existing unit, using the existing air handling, its simply a block of ice if the stat calls you use the same mechanical cooling. its quite simplistic, the biggest problem they had when I met them was dealing with the weight of the ice on a roof, they needed to be close to a column or gluelam or construction costs quickly shot up.

On the roof!?! Exposed to losses from the ambient temperature, wind, and solar insolation...I know it's insulated, but that's the worst place to put a block of ice, don't think there's going to be much savings from this unless the rate differential is at least 5 to 1, closer to 10 to 1 for any reasonable payback period.

http://www.ice-energy.com/technology/ice-bear-energy-storage-system/

It can work, unless electricity is the same price all the time.

It's the payoff that's the question.

Here in Arizona we have different rates for different of the day.

Case Studies

How it Works

Not an endorsement, just sayin'.

Those are case studies in name only, they give no specific information....They say they saved x amount of electricity but also say the A/C units were upgraded to high efficiency, but doesn't differentiate what saved how much...450 gallons of water = 3600 lbs...sort of like parking a car on the roof....There's no maintenance costs mentioned...no feedback from users...that much water freezing and thawing on a rigorous schedule like this is going to cause a lot of wear and tear on the containment area....I know enough about refrigeration to know that cooling the refrigerant in a liquid state and using that as a cooling medium is not the same as a true refrigerant cycle of evaporation and condensation, therefore I would question the performance of the unit in this mode....twice as much equipment means twice the problems...

"I know enough about refrigeration to know that cooling the refrigerant in a liquid state and using that as a cooling medium is not the same as a true refrigerant cycle of evaporation and condensation"

I believe you misunderestimate the process in use here.

The magic fakes plase during phase changling....

You missed the part about the "true refrigerant cycle of evaporation and condensation.

That hasn't changed.

They call them ice builders in factories, normally around 1mx1mx1m gives a tonne of cooling if all you need is cold water on demand.

If you have off peak electricity tariffs and the space and capital and maintenance budget....and you need loads of cooling that will offset the capex through tariff savings then it's good.

The best energy saving I found is when I installed a large desuperheater on my heat pump to heat mu pool instead of using a second heat pump like most people around here. I also have a desuperheater for the household hot water circuit.

Now, when I cool the house, the heat is dumped in the pool until 31C. Afterward, the normal air coils takes over and sends the surplus heat outside.

I don't understand why all house with AC systems or hotels or other buildings don't produce most if not all their hot water from the AC system in the summer.

It was so easy to do once I found an AC tech who would stop worrying about the warranties. It has been running for ten years. That was the best $2000 spent I could come up with. I save about that much in electricity each ~18-20 months.

I have other energy saving systems such as grey water and air exchange heat recovery but don't get the same return on my investment (if any).

if you don't already...pipe the condensate line from the AC coil into your gray water rather than down the drain its an easy 5-20 gallons a day when humid