Star Refrigeration’s Roadmap to Cold Storage Energy Efficiency Sets Out Clear Guidelines on How To Optimise Energy Consumption

Star Refrigeration provides cold storage facility owners and operators with a blueprint to optimise their energy consumption and reduce their bills and carbon footprint in the process.

Over the last 12 months, energy prices throughout the UK have risen by an average of almost a third, while an increase in the Climate Change Levy means that companies across Britain are under pressure to achieve greater energy efficiency. That’s particularly true for refrigeration systems, where energy accounts for approximately 60% – 80% of total spend over the life of the plant.

With that in mind, Star Refrigeration have devised a roadmap for plant owners who wish to operate as efficiently as possible. The roadmap has been split into six different stages, half of which apply to those looking to construct a new facility and half of which are more geared towards optimising the energy consumption of an existing refrigeration system.

• Planning – This targets the site location and its layout, reducing the heat load in the store, the product throughput and the temperature variation this incurs and the ambient design temperature.
• Building construction – This targets the materials used in the building and the configuration of its doors, the jointing and vapour seals on individual panels and the overall minimisation of heat ingress.
• Refrigeration system and design– This targets the use of the correct system for the site’s specific needs, including appropriate sizing, functionality, refrigerant type and defrosting methodology, as well as the inclusion of performance-enhancing technologies and controls. Designing an optimised cooling system from the outset is vital in order to achieve the UK’s latest energy performance ‘Best Practice’ figures for cold and chill refrigeration facilities released at the International Institute of Refrigeration Conference in Montreal in September 2019.
• Maintenance. This targets a proactive maintenance regime and a robust response plan, both of which are geared towards detecting potential problems at an early stage, avoiding breakdowns and ensuring system longevity.
• System analysis and monitoring. This targets ongoing collection of data about the system’s performance and its power consumption, the analysis of which can yield benchmarks and reports that can inform system feedback to identify possible improvements and energy and carbon savings.

David Wallace, Star Refrigeration’s Director of Sales, said, “We want customers to see that making small changes throughout the whole process can have a significant impact when implemented right across the board. For example, even something as simple as raising the temperature setpoint of a cold store facility by a single degree can result in a 2-3% increase in overall efficiency. When similar optimisation measures are brought in at all stage of a plant’s life – from planning, design and construction to maintenance and performance – the results can be quite incredible. Our roadmap gives a clear route to achieving success through practical insight into effective techniques which have been proven to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions”

“ Our team are ready to help by providing specific, time sensitive, measureable targets at every stage of the process.”

Find out more about Star Refrigeration’s roadmap to energy-efficient temperature-controlled storage