Thermal Energy Storage System for Packaged HVAC Systems

The effects of climate change have worldwide and widespread damaging impacts including increased global average temperatures resulting from increased greenhouse gas emissions which cause harmful environmental and societal consequences. Without proactive intervention and mitigation strategies, erratic weather patterns including excessive drought and heightened risk of wildfires will be a dangerous daily reality. California has undertaken a variety of innovative and ambitious steps to reduce the effects of climate change, including the establishment of greenhouse gas reduction and clean energy goals. Senate Bill 846 (Dodd, Chapter 239, Statutes of 2022) resulted in a load flexibility goal of 7,000 MW by 2030 to help reduce net peak electrical demand in California. Technologies such as thermal energy storage present a viable pathway to address load shifting needs and enable greater load flexibility to help California meet energy targets. The project evaluated the energy performance of Stasis Energy Group’s thermal energy storage system, which was installed in the air ducts of 10 commercial building locations with rooftop heating, ventilation, air conditioning units, across several climate zones. This project accomplished several agreement goals, such as an average annual load shift savings of 46 percent, a reduction of 5.13 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, and an average of 13 percent energy efficiency savings across all 10 project sites. Based on the results of this project, Stasis Energy Group calculated that installing their thermal energy storage system in as little as 1 percent of the commercial rooftop unit market would result in more than 16.8 million kilowatt-hours of energy efficiency and 59.5 million kilowatthours of load shifting annual energy savings. This equates to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions by 3,872 metric tons of carbon dioxide and 13,701 metric tons of carbon dioxide from energy efficiency and load shifting, respectively.