At its Bremerhaven site, Ecocool GmbH operates a newly built deep-freeze warehouse for freezing and storing cold packs from its own production. The manufacturer of transport refrigerated packaging offers its battery packs in combination with its insulated boxes. "Keeping our cooling elements at around minus 20 degrees and delivering them in a frozen state is an attractive service for our customers," says Ecocool Managing Director Dr. Florian Siedenburg. "However, this requires a high energy input at the storage location."

Savings through intelligent energy management software

To reduce electricity costs and its carbon footprint, Ecocool has recently started using fleXality's intelligent energy management software. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), the Bremen-based engineers' IT system optimizes the control of the refrigeration system. At the same time, the algorithm ensures the cost-optimized procurement of the electricity required for refrigeration on the basis of a day-ahead electricity contract. As a result, this flexibilized energy consumption already saves an average of 14.7 percent of the electricity costs for operating the deep-freeze warehouse in the first phase. Further optimization will continuously increase the savings.

"With the help of the fleXcool software, we are transforming our cold storage facility into a modern and sustainable energy storage medium - comparable to a large battery storage system," says Ecocool Managing Director Dr. Florian Siedenburg. "This storage principle allows us to use times of the day when electricity costs are very low to freeze the cold packs. At times when electricity is expensive, we allow the temperature in the warehouse to rise slightly".
The advantage of the Ecocool project: "Due to the specific nature of the refrigerated goods, we can utilize a comparatively wide temperature range of a maximum of 15 Kelvin when controlling the refrigeration system," explains fleXality Managing Director Sören Eilenberger. "This allows us to achieve noticeable savings for the customer in the long term despite the relatively small storage area."

Increased independence from electricity prices

Although Ecocool produces green electricity using its own photovoltaic system, a certain amount of electricity still has to be purchased externally. "Although we have a reduced carbon footprint thanks to the high proportion of green electricity we produce ourselves, we are not completely immune to massive price increases on the spot market." In times of energy crisis - especially with the start of the war in Ukraine - the purchase of electricity became considerably more expensive for European companies. Energy-intensive companies in particular are now faced with the challenge of optimizing their energy management.

"The flexibilization of energy consumption, as we implement it at Ecocool, is a central key to the energy transition," fleXality Managing Director Sören Eilenberger is convinced. "The principle of AI-based energy flexibilization shifts energy consumption to periods in which energy is produced cheaply - for example by wind and solar power plants - and can also be purchased cheaply. This is a benefit for energy-intensive companies that cannot cover their entire energy requirements themselves. The use of fleXcool is particularly suitable for large frozen food warehouses."

Ecocool and fleXality started their collaboration in summer 2023 and can already look back on several months of live operation - with a good interim result. "We have already had several days of operation on which savings of up to 69.8 percent have been achieved," says Eilenberger. "On average, we are currently still making savings of 14.7 percent per day - and the trend is rising, because we want to further optimize the system and increase the use of self-generated PV electricity by integrating it into the control variables."