Development and Validation of Demand Response Quick Assessment Tool For Refrigerated Warehouses in California

The goal of this project was to develop a Demand Response Quick Assessment Tool for Refrigerated Warehouses (DRQAT-RW) that can make accurate recommendations about Energy Efficiency (EE) and Demand Response (DR) potential in individual facilities. The objective of this tool is to provide a reliable way for simulating the operations of individual refrigerated warehouse facilities. This report discusses EE measures, DR considerations, and load shed or shift strategies relevant to refrigerated warehouses. In addition, the EnergyPlus model used as the simulation engine of the tool is described in detail. The report also analyses the measured data from an actual cooler facility in Southern California to verify the simulation results of the tool. DRQAT-RW was tested and validated at an actual cooler facility in southern California. An analysis on the measured and simulated space temperature resulted in acceptable tolerance values suggesting that even without model calibration DRQAT-RW’s simulation engine is capable of predicting accurate space temperature. In addition the model accurately predicted 1.5°F temperature increase due to a DR event at the test facility. The predicted temperature rise precisely represents the facility’s behavior during an actual event during which 9 probes collected real-time space temperature. The estimated demand reduction during the two hour DR event is 157 kW, which is very close to the measured load shed based on the baseline days of 3/17/2015 and 3/18/2015. It was found that the compressor load had large fluctuations before and after the DR test day. Using the average demand of all baseline days, the simulated load shed from compressor load is 20% higher than the measured on the DR test day, which is still within the acceptable model tolerances.