Refrigeration Data Share

BPA recognizes Commercial Refrigeration as an important end use in the commercial energy savings portfolio for the region. The Northwest Power And Conservation Council identified commercial refrigeration as the third highest source of commercial conservation savings behind commercial lighting and HVAC systems. 

Given the importance of Commercial Refrigeration to meeting future energy savings, BPA began exploring ways to track this energy consumption to better inform measure development.  In 2012, the Energy Efficiency Engineering team became aware of a refrigeration performance monitoring system – Climacheck - and decided to use the equipment to monitor commercial refrigeration systems in the BPA region.  

Who Might Benefit from this Site

The target audience for the Climacheck  data includes energy efficiency engineers, program managers, third party implementers and commercial refrigeration collaborators. In working with other Commercial Refrigeration experts, a major challenge in completing analyses is real world performance data to conduct analyses and modeling.  The goal of the project was to capture real world  refrigeration system performance data which could be used  in a variety of engineering analyses including: validating Energy Efficiency Ratios; testing models and calculators; completing  load shape analyses; and evaluating measures for implementation.

About the Metering Locations

Seventeen circuits in five retail locations were identified for monitoring within the BPA region. Each of these locations had different refrigeration characteristics including one with a Transcritical CO2  system. The locations and general characteristics are summarized below:
  1. Site 501534 is a grocery store located in Canby, OR.  There are seven refrigeration circuits that have been monitored. 
  2. Site 501527 is a grocery store located in Vancouver WA. There are two refrigeration circuits.
  3. Site 501601 is a grocery store located in Mercer Island, WA, There are two refrigeration circuits, including a transcritical CO2 system.
  4. Site 501439 is a grocery store located in Vancouver WA.  There are two refrigeration circuits--a low temperature Rack A on Circuit 13 and a medium temperature Rack B on Circuit 12 – installed in approximately 2005. 
  5. Site 501529 is a grocery store located in Pasco WA.  There are four refrigeration circuits--a low temperature Circuits 16 and 17 and medium temperature Circuit 14 and 15 – installed in approximately 2000.  Both racks share a single Emerson E2 refrigeration system controller.


Selection of the Refrigeration Systems

The Refrigeration Data Share Project attempted to identify a range of refrigeration systems with a variety of system components, including single compressor systems, multiplex compressor systems, traditional refrigerant systems, CO2 refrigerant systems, and systems installed in dry and hot locations, as well as humid coastal locations.

What Data Is Available

This website provides  access to performance data collected from 17 circuits in five different geographical locations during 2017. Data was captured at 1 minute increments 24/7. The data contains up to 129 variables for each circuit, some variables were directly monitored like compressor inlet and outlet temperatures and pressures and compressor 3 phase true power, while other variables were calculated, like system EER. These variables are identified and described in word documents that provide system diagrams and variable names associated with each circuit that has been monitored. An additional document that describes how some of the calculated variables are calculated is also provided. 

BPA’s  Next Steps

BPA continues to work with the data. Possible next steps for the team include:
  1. Provide the data to the RTF to update assumptions in refrigeration UES measures for values of EER (Energy Efficiency Ratio, Btuh/W) and Average Annual Load to Design Load Ratio. 
  2. Provide data to be used in future regional end use loads analyses.
  3. Identifying new measures and refining program offerings.
  4. Identifying future research projects to address performance anomalies.
  5. Creating new commercial refrigeration system commissioning programs.

For Questions

Please contact Jamie Anthony, EE Commercial Technical Lead and Commercial Refrigeration SME at BPA if you have any questions regarding this project. His contact information is:  jtanthony@bpa.gov

Supporting Documents

​System Data