Save £50 million on chiller power

[polygonum]

We have little direct influence over much energy use. While we are being pushed into using execrably horrible CFLs, some companies are wasting energy in significant quantities.

I notice two specific things time after time.

First, hot air pouring out of permanently open doors on shop after shop. I can quite easily feel it many feet away in the chilly outdoors.

Second, cold air pouring out of chillers in almost every shop which sells cold food.

So it is somewhat interesting to hear quite how much chillers are wasting:

"Co-op supermarkets extend fridge door scheme

Chain saves £50m a year in energy bills but other stores fear for sales if produce is shut away

Supermarkets are replacing the open refrigerators in their stores, which chill milk, meat and shoppers alike and which waste huge amounts of energy.

The Co-operative, which already has 100 stores with doors on its fridges, is saving £50m a year in energy bills and cutting its environmental impact.

If all the UK's supermarkets put doors on their fridges, the electricity saved would be roughly double the output of the giant Drax coal-fired power station in Yorkshire, Europe's second largest. But few are following the Co-op's lead, worried about sales if groceries are shut away.

Dave Roberts, the Co-op's director of property, said: "That was a big concern for us. But we found that because we put LED lights around the doors, customers said it brought the product to life. In no places where we have put doors on fridges have sales gone down.""

is a lot of electricity. If the Drax-equivalence is to be believed, some 7% of UK electricity supply, around 3.96 GW.

Of course, not only waste, but also discomfort, sometimes severe, of that chilled air on people who have difficulty tolerating it. These chillers sometimes seem to spill more and colder air on damp, cool days like today than at the height of summer.

I remember the difference when my then-local Spar put in a ribbon-screen on their single chiller cabinet almost twenty years ago. Very noticeable. Don't think their sales changed, but then, many people had little choice!

Oh! And our new Lidl seems to have quite a number of chillers with lids, and those that do not have lids still don't cascade cold air to the same extent as the only-slightly-older Sainsbury, Asda and Morrisons. (By between a few months and a few years.)

[harry]

The new chilling devices often use the heat from the chillers to heat the building. So it's not entirely wasted. But a closed chest type (top lid) is going to be more efficient.

A lot of the problem revolves around stock rotation, ie old stock being left at the bottom of chest type cabinets. And you can display more stuff in the vertical type.

[polygonum]

And just how much heating is required in the scorching summer when the chillers are working hardest and pouring out the greatest quantities of chilled air?

Re-use of heat from chillers was implemented at least in the 1980s - and I rather assume that Co-op's savings are on top of any gains from that.

Having doors does not preclude vertical! The old Spar chiller I referred to was vertical.

Have however, been reminded of one supermarket I used to visit. It had a chill room where all the chilled produce was kept. You'd push your trolley through a strip "curtain", grab your stuff, and rush out the the other side. Can't see that working in these days of chillers providing, I'd guess, between 20 and 60% of shelving. And it was not very nice in winter, nor on a very hot day.

[Brian Gaff]

It will happen but companies won't change till they have had their moneys worth out of what they have I suspect.

Brian

[Bill Wright]

That sounds like one of those 'facts' that go round and round the internet and are not true. If you go in any supermarket the whole area of the shop has rows of fluorescent lights. I'd say that the energy usage of those lights per sq metre must far exceed the chillers below them, and the chillers occupy only a small part of the shop, about a tenth I'd guess. Then there's all the other power usage in the shop. And of course, putting doors on freezers doesn't reduce their consumption to zero. So if it were true that putting doors on the freezers saved 4GW, the total power consumption of the supermarts must be at least 16GW. That's a third of the UK's total consumption on a normal day. I think the journo has got mixed up between GW and MW.

Bill

[polygonum]

> >

Possibly - but if Co-op are saving £50 million a year from partial implementation, that could end up a lot of millions if all supermarkets did so. And that large number of millions would buy a lot of electricity.

A quick Google suggests that Co-op have around 7% of supermarket sales. So we are talking £50 over 3.5% of sales - which runs out at around 1400 million total. (Yes - lots of naive assumptions.)

At 10p per unit that would be 14,000,000,000 kWh. Drax produces 24 GWh a year. If commercial units are a bit cheaper, it at least appears feasible.

[The Natural Philosopher]

>>>>> >

there is no doubt that in non working hours we use s lot less electricity.

But I suspect that chillers are not switched off over the Xmas week.

So its probably lighting that is chewing the juice.

I asked at waitrose- all the store heat is in fact part of the chiller system. IN winter they heat the store with the heat extracted from the freezers.

In summer they do their best to make sure people believe in global warming, by dumping it all into the urban air.

[Bill Wright]

Another 'fact' lifted from the Guardian. Probably bollocks. They'll be eager to swallow any greeny nonsense the Co-op feeds them. Typical greenwash.

Bill

[polygonum]

The story, in various guises, has been reported elsewhere but I thought the Guardian's version was quite clear and specific. Maybe all of them were fed by Co-op PR?

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

That's a load of c*ck, really. Nobody thinks twice about sliding the freezer tops back and in my local supermarket the wall-hung cold cabinets are well-used, even with doors on.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

I suspect Bill, and a few others, have power company shares and are desperate to do down any power-saving scheme they come across. Nip it in the bud, as it were, before any of that dangerous nonsense affects their dividends.

[harry]

It's all about the psychology of selling. Impulse purchases etc.

[polygonum]

The article was (I think) about chillers specifically, rather than freezers.