Contact: Jasmine Williams (201) 569-0420

JWilliams@calmac.com

CALMAC Manufacturing Corporation

Thermal Storage System Green Background

Power generating plants are reputed to be significant contributors of ozone-degrading, greenhouse gas emissions. Energy conservation on the part of the consumer is an excellent strategy for reducing emissions and will continue to be advocated and promoted. Utilities, on the other hand, must strive to minimize those emissions by using their most efficient generators whenever possible.

During extreme high-temperature, daytime periods when the use of electricity is at its peak, these utilities are forced to call upon their secondary, back-up generators to meet the increased consumer demand. Since these supplementary generators are likely to pre-date the clean-air era, they are prone to be less efficient, and therefore emit more greenhouse gas than primary generators.

Therefore, it behooves utilities to reduce and/or eliminate their need for these secondary plants. This can be done in one of two ways: 1) encourage consumers to cut back on the use of electricity, and 2) somehow take advantage of energy created during low-demand periods for use during the day. This essentially shifts and levels the air-conditioning load.

Thermal Energy Storage, or Off-Peak Cooling does both.

This proven technology dramatically reduces total energy consumption by as much as 10% using nighttime generated energy and thereby reducing the utilities’ need for back-up generators. Off-Peak Cooling also reduces the size of the building’s required air- conditioning equipment, which includes chillers, cooling towers, pumps and electrical service. For instance, with Off-Peak Cooling, a 100 ton chiller is able to do the job of a 200 ton chiller in a conventional system, adding up to significant capital and operating savings.

Traditional air conditioning systems work by using fans to blow air past coils that contain chilled glycol, which serves as the heat-transfer-fluid. The glycol is chilled using high-energy consuming “chillers” which must operate whenever the air conditioning system is in operation.

The principle of Off-Peak Cooling is based on ice being made at night and used to cool the building during the following day. While still relying on chilled heat-transfer-fluid to flow past blowers, the Off-Peak Cooling concept calls for the glycol to be chilled as it flows through plastic tubes that are encased in ice within large tanks.

Chillers produce the ice during cost -saving, nighttime “low-demand” periods using their most efficient generating plants. By the time higher daytime rates come into effect, ice will have formed in the tanks and the chillers are turned off or used in tandem, but at a lower rate.

The building is cooled during the “peak demand” periods by using low-energy consuming pumps to move the ice-cooled glycol past fans (also low-energy consuming) that blow cool air into the building.

In short, Off-Peak Cooling does more with less.

CALMAC Manufacturing Corporation of Englewood, NJ is the world’s leading producer of Off-Peak Cooling. Marketed under the Ice Bank^® Stored Cooling System brand, CALMAC systems are helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lowering the energy costs of hospitals, office buildings, school buildings, institutions and retail facilities in the US and 35 other countries throughout the world.

The company’s Off-Peak Cooling technology has been instrumental in the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s headquarters being named California’s first Gold LEED® Certified building and Fossil Ridge High School in Ft. Collins, CO which had is LEED® 2.1 Silver Certified.

Working in concert with the building owner’s architects and engineering firms, CALMAC begins serving its clients by first determining the optimum configuration for a given installation. That includes recommending the right size and number of chiller units as well as the number and placement of tanks, which can either be situated on the roof, underground or outdoors, adjacent to the building.

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