Lead Performer: Grid Fruit, LLC. - Pittsburgh, PA
Partners:
-- Oak Ridge National Laboratory
-- VT Energy Control Systems
-- ARC Mechanical
-- Lawrence
-- Lober Electric
DOE Total Funding: $1,100,000
Cost Share: $13,700
Project Term: August 23, 2021 – August 22, 2023
Funding Type: Funding Opportunity
Project Objective
Perishable food items consistently account for over 50% of U.S. supermarket sales, but the refrigeration infrastructure vital for these items faces significant resiliency and efficiency issues. Due to low profit margins, the food retail sector routinely relies on legacy refrigeration equipment without investing in new, expensive alternatives. As a result, most food stores lack sufficient backup power or energy storage to continue running their refrigeration systems when a power outage strikes. In addition to lack of resilience, food stores face high operational costs due to the low efficiency of their commercial refrigeration systems. These systems are the largest energy consumers in food retail stores, constituting up to 62% of their energy usage. Through this project, Grid Fruit will develop an integrated hardware and software technology, a non-invasive automation solution that improves both energy resilience and energy efficiency of centralized and single condensing commercial refrigeration systems. This project provides a lower-cost alternative to bolstering refrigeration resilience in comparison to storage-based alternatives. Additionally, the controller allows for the system to partake in providing grid services.
Project Impact
Controlling operations with these optimized settings at the refrigeration case level will drop energy consumption in each food store by an estimated 174 MWh annually and save each supermarket an average of $36,000 a year.
Contacts
DOE Technology Manager: Payam Delgoshaei
Lead Performer: Javad Mahammadi, Mahnoush Babaei