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Markus, good points. Today we were discussing the feasibility of discontinuing the use of the two walk in fridges and maybe buying a few large fridges and freezers to replace them. Still need to do lots of measuring and evaluating.
Next month hope to have more realistic numbers to make an educated decision.
Personally Iike the walk in fridges because of their efficiency.
What helps a lot is to keep door opening times as short as possible, over here we use "kitchen carts" - one guy goes into the walk in with a list, puts all into the cart and goes out- 2 short periods of open doors.
On other freezer cells we use "airlocks" to reduce the amount of warm air to enter the frezer- if you have the space for it this works really well.
The cheapest energy is the one that you don't consume
If you go partially solar you can do a lot by storing "cold" instead of electricity. So take the freezer down to a very low temp while the power is for free, and maybe increase thermal mass to keep it more constant. There are some salines you can use that "freeze" at 6 C and others that freeze deep enough to be of use in a freezer.
You are on a good track if you go and measure and evaluate a lot before investing money.
Markus has a point. Heat loss (or gain) of a space is dependent on surface area and insulation value. A 1000 cubic foot cube has 600 square feet of surface area. Ten 100 cubic foot cubes has about 1300 square feet of surface area. The insulation in a walk in is usually much thicker than would be in a chest freezer. The area opening to reach product is a smaller percentage of total surface.
Antique heat pumping mechanism's, on the other hand..........
j-m, come on down and advise us. Better still bring a group down and we will put them to work. Hmmmm, how about a RV convoy from way up north?
Let me try to explain something without sounding proud or disparaging of those less fortunate or educated. In this part of the world and particularly the folks we need to interact with at the orphanage are lesser educated and experienced in the finer things of life than the average westerner. Their culture is often considerably quite different to the norm in the western world. For example; No matter how much we nag or threaten, they still do not turn the lights off when they leave the room. That is why we will be switching to motion sensor lights. Markus, you mentioned "kitchen carts', well, that concept just ain't a gonna fly down here. It's not just the adults, it's also the teenagers assigned to kitchen duty. Anything we do here to conserve energy absolutely needs to be automated and not rely on the human factor.
One of the problems with these people is that they have never needed to work for anything. Everything is donated. Coming from broken homes, abusive and dysfunctional families has left these kids and the supervising adults without much sense of responsibility. Maybe I can better explain it to say that it is a form of a third world culture compared to our first world. It is a never ending, sometimes daily battle to get anybody to accept responsibility. Hence one of the big problems with energy conservation. Am I making any sense here?
Another situation that we are dealing with is that there has recently been a change in top leadership. The original leaders and the orphanage founder due to lack of finances did everything as cheap as possible, with no thought to future expansion or energy conservation. They did a fantastic job with what they had, but the world is changing and everything is dramatically escalating in price. The new leadership recognises that it is necessary to make changes, but some of this is very hard due to the base already being laid. Slowly but surely the funding is arriving from generous donors to make the necessary changes. Funds for the solar panels is starting to trickle in, but much more is needed. We do what we can with what we have with an eye to future changes.
I worked in Africa on some projects that had similar "mentality" issues as yours..
We managed to get the cart and air-lock system to work by using automatic door closers on both doors and therefore making it a PIA not to use the cart. But maybe your folks would find a more creative workaround.
Yesterday I talked to a friend who owns a patisserie, and he showed me a massively high-tech, enormously complicated but efficient device that reduces energy consumption of the walk in freezer- a plastic curtain just inside the door! This drastically reduces air exchange while the door is open, and keeps moisture from entering too. ( And keeping the evap from icing up for a good bit longer)
The lighting inside the freezer should also be converted to LED as soon as possible, because you will need energy to get rid of the heat generated by inefficient lighting. And since nobody's gonna turn off the light the problem persists during a lot of hours per day.
Maybe you can get something like this
and monitor your suspect devices for at least a week to find out where you have the biggest savings potential, and also how you should plan your solar system. (Enough power to supply 40-60% of your daytime consumption after optimising should be a good average, save you around 300$ /Month on the bill and be quite a lot cheaper than the system you got quoted.
Engineering to save people from themselves is sometimes the most challenging. We try to idiot proof systems, but idiots are so ingenious.l....
Markus,
Is there one available that measures voltage, and thus true watts and VA. The voltage will show circuit losses that cause low voltage to a motor, greatly increasing current and power usage. Also, the difference between watts and VA will show power factor losses.
This $20 to $30 device does it quite well for plug in appliances.
For j_martin: The moment you build something idiot proof sombeody builds a better idiot
I think he'll need something to measure and log current on 3 phases for the big stuff, but it should be easily transferrable to log a lot of devices in a sequence of suspicion.
The small loggers as j_martin suggested are really nice for small stuff where you know that nobody is unplugging and going around the meter to obfuscate the real costs of what they are doing.
(At least over here we have 3 phase 400V 50Hz for anything that needs some juice and the basic household stuff runs at 230V 50Hz)
If the walk ins work like ours you have a pump with a separable motor and if the stuff is old it's sometimes really nice to see how a simple motor swap reduces power consumption.
For j_martin: The moment you build something idiot proof sombeody builds a better idiot
You got that one right.
I think he'll need something to measure and log current on 3 phases for the big stuff, but it should be easily transferrable to log a lot of devices in a sequence of suspicion.
I highly doubt he's got 3 legs installed anywhere. Even if something is 3 phase, it's probably ghosted.
The small loggers as j_martin suggested are really nice for small stuff where you know that nobody is unplugging and going around the meter to obfuscate the real costs of what they are doing.
For instance, small refers or freezers. Sometimes one that seems to be running nice is really a power hog.
(At least over here we have 3 phase 400V 50Hz for anything that needs some juice and the basic household stuff runs at 230V 50Hz)
If the walk ins work like ours you have a pump with a separable motor and if the stuff is old it's sometimes really nice to see how a simple motor swap reduces power consumption.
I highly doubt he's got 3 legs installed anywhere. Even if something is 3 phase, it's probably ghosted.
OK, that is really different to our system- even small appartments are supplied in 3 phase over here
For instance, small refers or freezers. Sometimes one that seems to be running nice is really a power hog.
Yep, you are right, I just wanted to say that there needs to be some measures against unplugging the meter if you want to eliminate user influence.
Or even a complete compressor-condensor unit.
At least at our systems the compressors were rebuildable for cheap and with new bearings, belts and a new motor were extremely close to the efficiency of the new ones.
I can only talk about the systems I have worked with, and there are massive differences between the USA and Europe&Western Africa in regards to the electrical system, and the devices that are used. So my advice is to be taken with a grain of salt when going into the details.
For the most part I would not say that there idiots at the orphanage, they just don't know or understand, but are getting better, - slowly. On the other hand, some of the drivers definitely ARE idiots!!!!
No three phase at this place, only in manufacturing areas. We are stuck with old fashioned 220/110 single phase.
Never thought about plastic curtains inside the walk in fridges. Costco uses them for their large coolers where they sell the veggies, which means hundreds of warm bodies going in and out every day. Good suggestion and for sure will look into this.
I can only talk about the systems I have worked with, and there are massive differences between the USA and Europe&Western Africa in regards to the electrical system, and the devices that are used. So my advice is to be taken with a grain of salt when going into the details.
For instance, Europe is replacing R12 with propane, with a bit of improvement in efficiency. Here we use R134, which has a lower flash point than propane, and lose about 30%.
02-23-2016, 05:08 PM
