Viking Cold was awarded the Peak Load Management Alliance’s (PLMA) Technology Pioneer Award for utilizing our long-duration Thermal Energy Storage technology as a grid asset. The PLMA invited our VP of Sales & Marketing, Collin Coker, to discuss our TES technology and how we are implementing systems across the country and around the world bringing flexible energy storage plus efficiency benefits to our customers and utilities alike.  You can watch the PLMA webinar here.

On the MarketScale Energy podcast, President & CEO James Bell explores risk reduction in the cold chain. Dealing with frozen food has a lot of inherent risks: which include the enormous and continuous energy required to safely store frozen food, the variable and continually increasing energy prices, potential loss of power due to increasingly more common natural disasters, refrigeration system mechanical failures, and ultimately liability for lost or damaged product. Thermal Energy Storage (TES) can address each of these issues to add resiliency and efficiency, as well as reduce risks in the storage of frozen food applications.

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Sam Spencer of Smart Grid Today interviews Viking Cold Solutions’ CEO James Bell to discuss our Thermal Energy Storage technology and how this long-duration storage medium can improve grid resiliency by storing and discharging for up to 13 hours, adding efficiency to commercial and industrial refrigeration systems, and providing thermal resiliency for our customers in temperature-controlled environments during mechanical breakdowns or power outages due to natural disasters or grid outages.

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Food Processing Magazine has published an eHandbook outlining new technologies that food processors can use to improve food safety and food quality in their operations.  A number of new food processing technologies and their benefits are described including the food quality and energy-saving benefits of thermal energy storage.

Our growing need for more power, shifting patterns of demand, and the rapid expansion of variable renewable generation is presenting challenges to the grid. Energy storage is certainly part of the solution, but is the market or regulation driving the development of storage? How is long duration storage being advanced to better address these needs?  Are there long duration energy storage solutions today that are economical to broadly deploy? Get some answers in this Utility Dive article that discusses the drivers and economics of long duration energy storage.

Accelerate Magazine, a publication focused on advancing HVAC&R sustainability, has featured Viking Cold’s Thermal Energy Storage (TES) technology. The article covers the sustainability benefits of TES, a recent utility-backed demand management project, and a customer installation case study.

Viking Cold Solutions is pleased to have been named a finalist for the 2019 Energy Storage North America Innovation Awards! The ESNA Innovation Awards recognize excellence and impact in energy storage project development.

Viking Cold has been recognized for its deployment of eight Thermal Energy Storage (TES) systems as part of a utility-backed demand management program in Massachusetts. These behind-the-meter TES systems store and facilitate the management of approximately 1.3 MW of energy onsite. This project is noteworthy because Viking Cold’s solution leverages the facilities’ existing refrigeration systems to store cold energy and discharge it over long periods of time (up to 13 hours) when it is most beneficial for the grid and the facility operator, thus lowering energy costs, increasing resiliency, and helping the environment.

The Greater Boston Food Bank, the program’s first installation, has already seen a 75% reduction in energy consumption and a 76% reduction in demand during its four-hour peak demand period.

“As the largest hunger relief organization in New England, our goal is to provide healthy meals to those in need across Eastern Massachusetts,” said The Greater Boston Food Bank SVP of Supply Chain and Food Acquisition, Cheryl Schondek. “We strive for cost-saving operational efficiencies, and our partnership with Eversource and the installation of the Viking Cold TES system better enables us to achieve this goal. We appreciate their commitment to our mission to end hunger here.”

You can read more about the TES project online here.

Please help Viking Cold win this year’s ESNA Innovation Award – you can vote with the form online here. Deadline is September 12, 2019.

Cold Facts, the official publication of the Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA), published an article covering new technologies in cold storage construction that add efficiency to cold storage building projects. The article describes a presentation at the 38th Controlled Environment Building Association (CEBA) Conference delivered by Viking Cold Solutions, Cold Box Builders, and Evapco. Representatives from all three companies discuss new efficiency technologies and trends for the cold storage industry, particularly in ammonia refrigerated facilities.

Progressive Grocer has published an article outlining the not-to-distant future of sustainable grocery store refrigeration.  Numerous technologies from companies like Viking Cold, Emerson, Honeywell, and CoolSys are referenced as the key to what is rapidly becoming the new normal in grocery stores: improved refrigeration sustainability.

Those in the cold storage biz know that more thermal mass inside a freezer allows that freezer to float, or flywheel, longer without active refrigeration. But is food the right thermal mass to use to cut energy costs?  Can flywheeling periods be even longer?  Can more energy be saved?  Can it be done without using food as the thermal battery?  Read the full article published on FoodDive.com to learn how thermal energy storage improves the economic benefits of flywheeling without requiring additional energy or risking the quality of the food we put on our tables every day.