Enel X Commercial Refrigeration Flexible Demand Project

Summary

Need

The commercial sector has been an early adopter of distributed energy resources such as energy efficiency and rooftop solar. Despite this, the sector has been slow to embrace flexible demand due to prohibitive costs, relatively less economies of scale (compared with the larger industrial sector), the requirement to upgrade and centralise control systems and lack of demonstration projects showing that participation is possible without compromising operations.

Commercial refrigeration sectors are well suited to flexible demand due to inherent thermal inertia and fast-responding assets but are currently not incentivised to maximise their use of this flexibility.

Action

The project will be delivered through the following two workstreams:

• Retail Refrigeration: Enel X will enable retail chains to utilise their refrigeration assets to participate in flexible demand programs (including FCAS and wholesale price arbitrage) through the Enel X Virtual Power Plant (VPP). The project will demonstrate the flexible demand potential of commercial refrigeration at 440 stores across the grocery, supermarket, convenience, beverage and last mile logistics sectors, and aims to deliver 15.5MW of flexible demand. Enel X has engaged a tier 1 grocery store chain as the initial customer for this workstream and is actively recruiting additional customers to take part in this project.
• Refrigerated Warehouses: Enel X has contracted Lineage Logistics for a specialty Electricity Supply Agreement (‘Flex Retail’) to reward active load shifting. In addition to delivering flexible demand value to the electricity grid, the Flex Retail agreement will significantly reduce Lineage’s electricity costs by actively matching their consumption to grid conditions with no risk or downside market exposure to Lineage. Enel X will also work with Lineage to upgrade controls, temperature monitoring and flexible equipment at their sites to maximise the amount of flexible demand made available within the Flex Retail agreement. This project includes 13 refrigerated warehouses and aims to deliver 5.4MW of flexible demand.

Outcome

This project aims to support uptake of flexible demand in commercial refrigeration sectors through:

1. reducing the upfront cost of metering and control solutions to improve the economics for small sites;
2. demonstrating the business case for flexible demand at a variety of smaller facility types (compared to traditional C&I demand response);
3. demonstrating the customer value proposition of an innovative ‘Flex Retail’ structure that incentivises load shifting on an up to daily basis;
4. enhancing the quantity of flexible demand through site upgrades; and
5. sharing Project insights through the knowledge sharing deliverables.

Additional impact

By participating in flexible demand programs such as the Enel X VPP, energy customers can contribute to the electricity system by supporting more renewables, reducing wholesale energy prices, providing emergency support to reduce blackouts, reducing network infrastructure costs and providing system stability. Customers are financially rewarded for their participation and support to the grid.