Specific energy consumption values for various refrigerated food cold stores

Cold storage rooms consume considerable amounts of energy. Within cold storage facilities 60-70% of the electrical energy may be used for refrigeration. Therefore cold store users have considerable incentive to reduce energy consumption. The performance of a large number of cold stores has never been compared in detail across a range of locations. With government targets to reduce energy and emissions of greenhouse gasses (GHG), the need to benchmark and understand potential energy and GHG reductions is of great interest to end users. As part of a large project on cold store energy performance, internet based surveys were developed and data collected to determine energy usage in different cold store types, sizes and configurations. Mathematical models were developed to assist end users to reduce energy consumption and to identify how much energy a store should use in different usages and configurations. The information previously collected on cold store energy performance has previously been presented (Evans, et al., 2014a). Since that time the original data set has been increased by 46% to a total of 758 stores. This enables further analysis of the data. The work compares energy usage of cold stores in different parts of the World (countries, continents and according to temperature zone). The energy use of the cold stores is compared to theoretical energy use figures generated from a mathematical model.