Uma abordagem para economia de energia elétrica no uso de Chiller para refrigeração de clientes de grande porte

Abstract

Industrial and commercial consumers who use central air coolers for air conditioning in Brazil and worldwide still lack automation in their operation. In a context of increasing electricity tariff rates (ETR) and emerging transition to dynamic pricing, new business models and energy efficiency practices become desirable. Currently, it is quite common for air cooler operations to be performed through automated spreadsheets and good engineering practices. However, pressured by high energy tariffs, it is of interest to control operational variables in an optimized manner. This work proposes an approach based on solving an optimization problem to reduce the electricity bill, subject to thermodynamic and thermal comfort equation constraints. To this end, an optimized power demand control of Chiller devices, in response to dynamic ETR signals, is performed. The case study consists of analyzing 12 consumer units of a commercial establishment refrigerated by a one Chiller. The operational performance of the establishment was analyzed in fixed, peak and off-peak, and dynamic pricing scenarios over a 168-hour period (i.e., 7 days). The results show that in the fixed tariff there are no immediate evident benefits, as expected, while in the peak and off-peak tariff, as well as in the dynamic tariff, reductions of 34,66% and 30,15% were observed in the energy bills of the optimized operation compared to a non-optimized one.