Cold chain companies should get their hands on this comprehensive new report about investing in renewable energy, writes CCF deputy chief executive Tom Southall.
The cold chain uses a lot of energy, with cold storage alone using around 5 Terawatt Hours. Enough to power more than a million homes each year – and that’s without considering the future demand of a growing population and the electrification of vehicles.
What’s more, a combination of high gas costs following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and sky-high environmental taxes on non-domestic energy bills to pay for a fast-tracked transition towards a renewably powered national grid by 2030 have meant that prices have skyrocketed in recent years and this shows no sign of abating.
Cold storage businesses now spend well over £1bn on energy each year.
As a result, procuring, generating and managing energy is more important than ever for businesses that want to take control of energy costs and be more self-sufficient in the face of an increasingly volatile and unpredictable commodity.
To support members to take advantage of currently available renewable technologies, as well as to plan for emerging innovations quickly coming to market, the Cold Chain Federation has partnered with energy experts Olympus Power to produce a unique new guide.
Future Proof Your Business with Renewable Energy
Future Proof your Business with Renewable Energy includes a comprehensive look at the business case for renewables, how to overcome challenges such as insurance and grid connection issues, and some of the key considerations businesses need to make when planning a renewable project before taking a deep dive into technologies like:
- batteries
- solar panels
- combined heat and power (CHP)
The report also features an overview of financing options and good practice maintenance.
The guide culminates in the vision for the Cold Chain Microgrid of 2050 (see pages 24–25 in this issue of Cold Chain News), and the future technologies which will soon be available to help cold chain businesses move closer to complete self-sufficiency.
This article gives a preview of the advice and expert views in this valuable new guide. The full report can be accessed from the Cold Chain Federation website.
Expert’s View
“How you manage your battery system is as important as the batteries themselves”
Archie Walton is Olympus Power’s battery specialist
Smart monitoring of battery storage means you don’t have to think about what it’s doing. You tell it what to do and it runs the system for you.
That could be for maximum profit – to charge when grid prices are low and sell back when they’re high – or maximum savings, charging when renewable production is high.
The system will look at weather forecasts and predicted energy prices, work out when the sun is likely to be shining and tell the batteries to charge. If the weather is poor then it will schedule charging at night and use the power during the day.
It will manage the charging cycles to maximise the batteries’ lifespan, working out the best charging profile for each unit.
You can see everything it’s doing on a dashboard and create reports, which are useful for demonstrating the efficiency and effects of your system to decision makers in your business.
“We’re trialling voltage optimisers built for blast freezing”
Clare Horler is Olympus Power’s voltage optimisation expert
Installing a voltage optimiser (VO) is an easy win for most businesses.
You don’t need permission from the grid or your network operator and it will start working immediately.
We’d recommend getting a VO fitted to the supply for specific machines and equipment, as they’re more effective. VOs can go on lots of different types of equipment anywhere there’s space to fit one – they can get quite big, so you have to think about where to put it.
We analyse your electricity use by data logging it, calculate the size of VO you need and work out the savings. You decide if it’s worth investing in.
Right now we’re trialling a VO built specifically to work with mobile blast freezers, which use thousands of kilowatts in a single day.
A VO offering an 8% reduction in energy use on 1200kW per day will save £2,800 a week.
Expert’s View
Financial savings are the number one priority for most company boards.
Given that renewable power has the capacity to save money, committing to it would seem to be an easy decision.
But it’s when a commitment needs to be made that we find most renewables projects stall – whether it’s spending the money if the customer is self-financing or the contract they’re getting us to pay for it under a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA).
And it’s often due to decision makers lacking the information they need to say yes.
It’s entirely avoidable because the facts about investing in renewables are indisputable.
Renewables are the cheapest form of power, and they’re getting cheaper. A business that uses a lot of energy will benefit financially from using renewables.
And the less energy you buy from the grid, the more you save on the non-commodity charges – the part of your bill that pays for the transmission and distribution of energy.
Dave Middleton is Olympus Power’s finance director
What about being paid for electricity?
If your renewable installation is likely to generate a surplus, or you want to use it to generate income, you’ll be able to sell electricity to the grid.
This is done through the Smart Export Guarantee, an agreement between you and an electricity provider, which can be any of the 16 companies signed up to the scheme.
Each of the 16 sets its own rates and conditions, and you can choose which you’d like to sell to.
To be eligible, you need to be using:
- solar
- wind
- hydro
- anaerobic digestion with a 5MW maximum output, or
- micro combined heat and power with output under 50kW
How much you can export will be determined by the size of the grid connection you’re offered.
Export limits are set to protect the grid from being overloaded – it wasn’t designed to accommodate lots of small generators – and are maintained by limitation devices to reduce the power output of the system.
Members of the Cold Chain Federation can download the Renewable Energy Guide here.
