Industrial ADR: It’s like taking 650 households off the grid at once

New, game-changing solution enables ten-minute response – giving facilities enough time to safely shut down refrigeration systems during peak demand periods.

Demand response (DR) programs pay businesses to reduce energy usage during periods of grid stress. These programs have existed in commercial buildings for many years, but industrial facilities have been slow to commit.

That is now changing, thanks to an automated system that makes life easier for facility managers and massively increases revenue potential. Now companies like Lineage Logistics can effectively turn entire facilities into giant batteries – and get paid for providing that flexibility to the grid.

Lineage, the world’s largest cold storage company, signed up for a demand response program in Allentown, PA – but initially, they rarely participated in DR events. That’s in part because the burden was on facility managers to respond appropriately to events. Without good data or well-defined procedures, they were hesitant to make decisions that could potentially impact food safety or production.

There was a more fundamental problem, too: they weren’t able to respond to events within the required window. In a 24/7 operation, there’s not always a qualified person available to get to the control panel. Even if they do get there in time, the equipment couldn’t be safely curtailed within the 10-minute window required of the most lucrative events, known as “fast” demand response.

Ndustrial^™ seamlessly integrated Lineage’s refrigeration control systems and augmented the connection with their DR aggregator. The result of this orchestration and automation layer is profound. Now facility managers can safely and easily curtail large industrial refrigeration systems in under 10 minutes.

This allows the temperature-controlled warehouse – not just peripheral loads – to participate in fast DR events. That’s the equivalent of taking 650 average households off the grid all at once. Not only that, but Automated Demand Response (ADR) — a system that uses automation to reduce energy demand during peak periods — makes this all possible at the click of a button.

Read the full ADR case study here.