Energy storage is one concept which has gained a lot of popularity over the past few years. Because of its many benefits, thermal energy storage has become popular and is successfully been applied in several commercial installations and other places as well.
The main segment of thermal energy storage has been in the form of cool storage for space air conditioning. Such form of cooling is usually chiller based systems in which the refrigerator tools or equipment create chilled water or ice at the night time and this is used the following day to cool the commercial buildings. There are many benefits of thermal energy storage and below given is the list of the major ones.
1. Helps to Cut Down Electricity Bill
One of the major benefits of thermal energy storage is that it helps to save on electricity bill. It is a fact that for most of the organizations in the world the maximum expenditure done is on electricity bills. What thermal energy storage does is that it helps to bring this cost down and can also reduce or even eliminate peak demand. Most thermal energy storage chillers contribute to about one-third of the building’s peak electricity demand and hence can be considered very useful and advantageous.
2. Grid Benefits
Another major benefit of thermal energy storage is that it helps to address air conditioning loads which are the single biggest contributor to grid stress of electricity utility. The load factors are now down to 50 percent from 70 percent that were present during the 60s and the 70s.
This basically means that half of the utility producing capability lies idle for the large part of the year and is required only on some occasions and especially during the periods of air conditioning demands. This underutilization of creating the required infrastructure is an economic burden which all of us are continuously paying for. But thermal energy storage removes the peak load burden and hence offers grid benefits.
3. Green Building Certification
Those buildings which are identified as green buildings or have that certificate enjoy a large range of value enhancements. They buildings often enjoy benefits like reduction in operating costs, higher value of resale, improved productivity of workers and greater occupancy. Thermal energy storage is also capable of earning 2-4 credits in the category of LEED atmosphere and energy.
4. Highly Versatile
Another major and most important benefit of thermal energy storage is that it is highly versatile. This method offers incredible high round trip efficiency and is capable of recovering about 99% of the stored cooling. Another benefit that it offers is that it helps to avoid the vibrations of the chiller and also the noise from noise sensitive installations.
This method also offers the amazing facility of emergency cooling for mission critical loads and helps to preserve the limited electric power capacity for various critical functions. Thermal energy storage can also be discharged for both long and short durations.
