by Brianna Crandall — December 30, 2015—Axiom Exergy, innovator of behind-the-meter, thermal energy storage systems for supermarkets and food distribution facilities, is ramping up for initial demonstration projects with supermarket chains that are eager to reduce their energy bills by storing energy onsite.
To support these initial pilots and manage growth, the Axiom team has expanded its executive team and completed construction of a full-scale test system at the company’s new headquarters that is designed to simulate a broad set of energy storage and grid-edge applications.
The pilots are intended to show how the Refrigeration Battery enables supermarkets and food processing / distribution facilities to intelligently shift their refrigeration systems’ costly energy consumption to off-peak hours, substantially reducing their utility bills.
Axiom Exergy’s software optimizes the Refrigeration Battery’s charge cycle — storing refrigeration when energy costs are lowest and providing cooling services at peak consumption periods.
Earlier this year, Axiom Exergy announced the availability of its Refrigeration Battery, which can reduce a supermarket’s peak power usage by up to 40 percent and provide backup cooling during power outages. Since then, the company has engaged with several major supermarket chains to deliver pilot projects that prove how the Refrigeration Battery reduces energy cost, a key step to prepare for multi-site rollouts.
In addition, with the completion of a full-scale testing and demonstration system at their new facility, Axiom Exergy can now simulate energy applications such as load shifting, backup cooling, and in the near future, load curtailment based on demand response signals from grid operators.
Amrit Robbins, president and co-founder of Axiom Exergy, explains:
We offer an application-specific energy storage technology designed to store refrigeration. Rather than ‘peak shaving,’ we move a significant amount of load for a long period of time, which is essential for facilities with large, relatively smooth refrigeration loads. The Refrigeration Battery’s superior economics and value proposition is resonating well with energy managers at leading U.S. supermarket chains. Our pilots will both validate and quantify the system’s performance in real-world environments.
Axiom Exergy tackles supermarkets’ biggest energy problem: 24×7 refrigeration run time
The Refrigeration Battery is engineered to solve a major problem that businesses with high refrigeration loads have been unable to address until now: the inability to strategically manage inflexible refrigeration systems that consume more than 55 percent of the energy in a typical supermarket — and must be kept running during afternoon peak hours when electricity prices skyrocket.
Rather than storing electricity, the Refrigeration Battery “stores refrigeration” for later use, enabling these facilities to transform their refrigeration systems into large-scale, cloud-connected, intelligent, energy-storage resources. It is a non-invasive, “plug-and-play” retrofit that does not require modification to existing refrigeration systems.
Further, customers can save money from day one by taking advantage of Axiom Exergy’s flexible shared savings program, and avoid lengthy capital expenditure reviews. The team plans to announce details about financing options for the Refrigeration Battery in early 2016.
Axiom Exergy is an energy storage company focused on making the world’s energy systems smarter and more efficient. Its team has deep expertise in supermarket energy management, thermal energy systems engineering, hardware development and energy services. Axiom Exergy provides its customers — supermarkets and commercial buildings with high refrigeration-based energy loads — with turnkey energy management solutions that reduce operational costs and business risk.
