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Reducing Commercial Refridgeration Costs
I mentioned before about becoming a green provocateur, and trying to suggest ways to companies to reduce their energy consumption, saving money and reducing CO2 emissions. Whilst I have yet to be proactive, I belive my first attempt failed stiffling my ambitions, as I received no reply.
I thought I would look closer to home for my second choice and thus emailed the directors of my medium sized employer, with about 140 employees. The issue at hand was commercial refridgeration, at each of the ten locations they operate, each store has about two to four commercial refridgeration units.
The solution to reducing the energy consumed across the group is a small wax cube measuring about 3 inches squared and simply mimics the food in your fridge, by hooking up the fridge or freezer thermostat. As the air temperature in the unit rapidly changes the food temperature does not drop as quickly. The wax cube allows the fridge to work less hard, more efficiently without compromising food quality or safety, by reducing the amount of cooling cycles. Typically saving about 16 to 33% of the energy required.
Savings on walk-in fridges and freezers could be as high as 1500 kWh per annum, which would translate to about £150 in savings and almost 750kg of CO2 reduced. My quick calculations suggest as a group we could save about 40 000 kWh per annum, £4000, and almost 20 tonnes of CO2, across our ten locations, I will also forward this on to our parent company which operates almost 1000 locations across the UK.
So what is this miracle wax cube with such potential, it is the eCube. Developed by Guy Lamstaes and colleagues and gained them a place on the Guardian's fifty people who could save the planet.
It has some strong support across the industry with testimonials from;
"We have carried out an independent trial with an eCube in one of our on-site kitchens, through the trial we made an energy saving of 17.78%. Based on these savings we will be rolling out the eCube across all of our sites. It is a simple idea that seems to be very effective in energy saving which will lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions."
Mike Wells, Head of Facilities, npower
If you are interested in having an eCube or two, you will be happy to realise they don't cost the earth at a mere £25 each, with a potential payback in two to four months, it's not a surprise how these are being implemented across the country.
I thought I would look closer to home for my second choice and thus emailed the directors of my medium sized employer, with about 140 employees. The issue at hand was commercial refridgeration, at each of the ten locations they operate, each store has about two to four commercial refridgeration units.
The solution to reducing the energy consumed across the group is a small wax cube measuring about 3 inches squared and simply mimics the food in your fridge, by hooking up the fridge or freezer thermostat. As the air temperature in the unit rapidly changes the food temperature does not drop as quickly. The wax cube allows the fridge to work less hard, more efficiently without compromising food quality or safety, by reducing the amount of cooling cycles. Typically saving about 16 to 33% of the energy required.
Savings on walk-in fridges and freezers could be as high as 1500 kWh per annum, which would translate to about £150 in savings and almost 750kg of CO2 reduced. My quick calculations suggest as a group we could save about 40 000 kWh per annum, £4000, and almost 20 tonnes of CO2, across our ten locations, I will also forward this on to our parent company which operates almost 1000 locations across the UK.
So what is this miracle wax cube with such potential, it is the eCube. Developed by Guy Lamstaes and colleagues and gained them a place on the Guardian's fifty people who could save the planet.
It has some strong support across the industry with testimonials from;
"We have carried out an independent trial with an eCube in one of our on-site kitchens, through the trial we made an energy saving of 17.78%. Based on these savings we will be rolling out the eCube across all of our sites. It is a simple idea that seems to be very effective in energy saving which will lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions."
Mike Wells, Head of Facilities, npower
If you are interested in having an eCube or two, you will be happy to realise they don't cost the earth at a mere £25 each, with a potential payback in two to four months, it's not a surprise how these are being implemented across the country.
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