Abstract
Industrial facilities are seeking new strategies that help in providing savings mechanisms for demand charges. Demand charges are the charges incurred by industrial facilities as a result of power usage. Thermal energy storage has advanced significantly with lots of new applications, garnering the interest of many industrial facilities. These applications could be used to shave the industrial facilities’ peak electric demand and reduce their demand charges. This paper aims to demonstrate the efficacy of thermal energy storage in reducing demand charges and highlight new developments in the integration of smart control systems with thermal energy storage. The study compares energy consumption and peak demand for a facility equipped with and without thermal energy storage tanks using a fixed schedule for charging and discharging. Additionally, the paper examines the impact of incorporating a smart controller to determine when to charge and discharge the tank based on the facility’s real-time power usage and a given setpoint. The results indicate cost savings from the use of thermal energy storage tanks under two proposed scenarios, reflected in the reduced cost of power consumption for the studied facility. The incorporation of a smart controller with the thermal energy storage tank in the facility studied could provide estimated savings of 3.3% per year of power consumption charges, without considering the contribution of any incentives. The estimated savings provided by the fixed schedule scenario are 2.7% per year.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 2202 |
| Journal | Processes |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 2023 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
This work was funded by the Department of Energy Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains Industrial Assessment Centers Program under grant # DE-EE0009708, and Utah Office of Energy Development under grant # 171881. Energy assessments are critical to study the capability of facilities to achieve energy and power savings. Patterson et al. [] focused on the current practices and recommendations of the Industrial Energy Assessments Centers (IACs) sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Some energy assessments provide recommendations on how to manipulate the facility’s power profile to achieve demand charge savings. Most of these strategies involve a process called demand side management. Demand side management strategies provide saving mechanisms for industrial facilities by manipulating their demand profile [,,]. One promising strategy for demand side management is energy storage, which is one of the core pillars of this study.
Keywords
- demand side management
- load shifting
- scheduling
- smart controller
- thermal energy storage