top of page

IGA Coonabarabran

Summary

In 2017, Carlos IGA procured the former Coles site in Coonabarabran NSW. The site had a considerable energy footprint an energy auditor was engaged to do a full energy site audit. The site had old fluorescent lighting, outdated evaporative air conditioning and a large energy footprint. The task was to reduce the energy load whilst improving the thermal comfort for shoppers.


Challenge

From the completion of the audit, the energy auditor then put together an energy upgrade and renewable energy plan. In coordination with Carlos IGA, the plan would to be rolled out over a two (2) year period.



The plan also included a full redesign of the existing air conditioning requirements. The air conditioning was deemed to be insufficient as they required heating in the winter months which the evaporative coolers could not provide.



The project plan included new solar air conditioning, new LED Lighting, optimisation of the refrigeration systems with variable speed drives and a solar power plant of 83.64kW which allowed all of the onsite generation to be used onsite.






The store had state of the art LED strip lighting installed with 22 x Airius destratification fans along with 50kW of SuperEN solar powered air conditioning.


The site is fully monitored across its energy usage 24/7.





To condition the store 10 x 5.0kW solar air conditioners where installed in conjunction with 22 destratification fans with this system running independently of the main solar installation.



To combat peak demand issues from their refrigeration compressors, the compressors had variable speed drives installed.



Results

The energy upgrade completed in October 2020 and showed significant results. These results are as follows:



LED Lighting Upgrade – 64% Saving in lighting energy costs


Variable Speed Drives – 8-10% kilowatt hour saving and a 20-30% KVA reduction with the power factor levelling out at 0.95


The 83.64kW SolarEdge with Trina Tallmax solar generation removed on average 22%+ of power requirements daily based on generation profiles that are seasonally adjusted.

The largest avoided energy increase was with the solar air conditioners in conjunction with the destratification fans.


Estimates supplied by locally sourced conventional air conditioning companies showed a base requirement of 85 – 94kWr of air conditioning would be required over the 660 square meters of supermarket space.


Thermal imaging showed that the there was a significant difference in temperatures in the refrigerated aisles and the dry stock aisles. By installing the 50kW of Solar AC units and running them in conjunction with the 22 x destratification fans we achieved a a balanced comfortable environment for customers while avoiding an average of 13.198 MWh of additional energy required to run conventional air conditioning.


In conclusion, Carlos IGA have realised a significant energy saving and improved customer conditions.


Comments


Commenting has been turned off.
bottom of page