Time-Shifting Building Cooling

Subtitle:  How To Cut Power Bills and Still Cool The Building

It has long been known that one can save on the power bill by using cheap power at night to chill water, or freeze the water into ice, then using the cold created thereby the next day to provide air conditioning.  University of Southern California, USC, has done this for some years.  Today, an article is published showing how Goldman Sachs is doing the same for its large skyscraper in Wall Street.  see link  

The beauty of the system is it can also be a way to cut power prices even more - especially when very expensive power prices exist due to brand-new nuclear power plants.  Instead of using electricity at night, one would purchase natural gas to run thermal chillers, store the chilled water or ice, then run only low-powered fans and pumps to chill the building the next day.   Customers in Georgia and South Carolina will soon be looking into this with great interest as the very, very expensive new nuclear plants are built on their grids. 

Removing a large load from the grid - especially at night - forces nuclear plants to reduce rate at night.  The utility then must request a rate increase to pay for the nuclear plant, since fewer kWh are produced.  This makes it even more attractive for its customers to either stop buying power, generate their own power, or as this article shows, purchase cheap natural gas at night in order to not run expensive air conditioners the next day.  

As shown earlier in The Truth About Nuclear Power, part 7, as nuclear power percentage increases on a grid, more and more customers will opt out of the grid by reducing their purchases, self-generating, or by other means.  see link  

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. 
Marina del Rey, California

Copyright (c) 2014 by Roger Sowell -- All rights reserved