Economics of Cold Store Time of Use control

The Night Wind Control System (NWCS) is intended for use with an energy contract that incorporates hourly elctricty pricing. The price of electricity varies by the hour, e.g.  APX (Amsterdam Power eXchange) prices ranged from 0,12 Euro/MWh to 96,69 Euro/MWh in 2014. For a contemporary example see tomorrow's APX prices. By selecting the lowest priced hours it is possible to arrive at a tariff substantially below the normal base load tariff.

The savings that can be reached with the NWCS are depending on the "freedom" to choose only the hours with the lowest electricity price. When the refrigeration machines have to work only a few hours per day to cool the cold store, the freedom of choise is large. When the refrigeration machines are practically running continuously at maximum capacity, there is almost no freedom of choise, and consequently the savings are smaller. 

The investments for the NWCS are small, because the imlementation of the NWCS is limited to a change of the refrigeration machine's control system. Typically, the implementation costs are below 10.000 Euro and will have a pay back of only months (depending on the refrigerating capacity of the cold store).

The Night Wind Control System was implemented in the largest frozen storage facility in The Netherlands (Partner Logistics cold store, Bergen op Zoom). In 2010, electricity cost savings reached 210.000 Euro.