A Whole Foods Market store in California, USA has received the first installation of Axiom Exergy’s thermal energy storage solution, the Refrigeration Battery. The project will shift up to 1,040 kilowatt-hours of electricity load at the facility for up to 10 hours a day. Whole Foods facility managers now get real-time information on the system’s performance via Axiom’s integrated cloud-monitoring platform, which includes enterprise-level monitoring and analytics, historical data, and real-time key performance indicators such as kilowatt-hours shifted, peak kilowatts reduced, and battery charge level. Refrigeration accounts for as much as 55% of an average supermarket’s electricity consumption. By shifting electricity demand to off-peak hours, supermarket owners can avail themselves of lower nighttime rates to lower a store’s costly on-peak electricity demand by up to 40%. The installation was done as a passive retrofit, without modification of the existing refrigeration system or reprogramming of controls. By using the store’s existing refrigeration system, the Refrigeration Battery stores ‘cooling’  at night by freezing tanks of salt water when energy costsare low. Then, when electricity prices peak in the afternoon, the battery ‘discharges’ to provide uninterrupted cooling services. The technology has an estimated lifespan of 25 years.

(Source: http://www.progressivegrocer.com)