It's almost a scene taken from a New England scrapbook: Ice Energy plans to use ice to replace conventional air conditioning for 200 residential units on Nantucket Island off the Massachusetts Coast.
Genbright LLC is partnering on the project, which aims to help reduce Nantucket's peak energy demand.
Currier & Ives anyone?The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources awarded the two companies a $3 million contract to provide the behind-the-meter energy storage using Ice Energy's Ice Bear 20 technology. Genbright will perform real-time dispatch to deliver more than 1 megawatt of peak demand reduction. A press release says that is equivalent to around one year of growth in electricity demand on the island.
Over 200 Ice Bear units will be installed on Nantucket, beginning in summer 2017. The project goal is to prove how new energy storage technologies can be deployed as "non-wires alternatives" to defer the need for a third undersea cable to Nantucket. Such a cable could cost between $75-100 million.
An Ice Bear freezes water into ice at night when demand for power is low and electricity is more abundant. During the day, the ice is used to provide air conditioning instead of energy-intensive AC compressors.
Ice Energy's Ice Bear units deliver behind-the-meter ice battery storage for HVAC systems in commercial, industrial and residential applications, and now commercial refrigeration, providing peak capacity to over 40 utility service territories nationwide.
Genbright provides commercial asset management services to owners of distributed energy infrastructure, including solar, demand response, energy storage, energy efficiency and other distributed generation distributed resources.
To contact the author of this article, email david.wagman@ieeeglobalspec.com
