Techno-economic feasibility of integrating energy storage systems in refrigerated warehouses

This work evaluates the techno-economic feasibility of integrating the cold energy storage system and the electrical energy storage system in a refrigerated warehouse for shifting the power consumption. A dynamic model has been developed in TRNSYS®. Based on the dynamic simulation, the performance and benefit of those two types of energy storage systems were compared. Results showed that, the integration of a cold energy storage can reduce the electricity consumption and operational cost by 4.3% and 20.5%, respectively. Even though integrating a battery system will increase the electricity consumption by 3.9%, it can reduce the operational cost by 18.7%. The capacity of the energy storage systems, the battery price and the peak electricity price had been identified as key parameters affecting the performance and benefit. To achieve a payback period less than 3 year, for the integration of a cold energy storage system, the peak electricity price should be increased by 25% from the current level, while for the integration of a battery system, the battery price should drop to 0.7 kRMB/kWh.