News
SPHERE, GFA AND BASE
DELIVERING CAAS
Since June 2019, Sphere Solutions, GFA Climate & Infrastructure,
and the Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy (BASE) have been
collaborating on bringing the Cooling as a Service (CaaS) model to
South Africa.
WHAT IS CAAS?
The CaaS initiative is driven by Switzerland-based BASE, together
with the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program (K-CEP) with the aim of
reducing energy consumption and the GHG emissions from cooling
through a pay-per-service model for efficient cooling systems. CaaS
involves building and business owners to pay for the cooling service
instead of purchasing the equipment that delivers the cooling, while the
technology provider owns the cooling system, maintains it, and covers
the operational costs connected to it.
WHY SOUTH AFRICA?
As the country experiences increasing demand in cooling, combined
with a continuous rise in electricity prices (9% in 2019 with a further
rise expected in 2020), refrigeration technologies that prioritise clean
and energy efficient cooling deliver clear cost advantages to local
businesses. This makes South Africa a particularly good candidate for
the implementation of (CaaS); which in itself lowers market barriers
for businesses to engage with the best technologies and benefit from
the advantages of energy efficient cooling products on the market. The
latter is even more accentuated given the current impact COVID-19 has
had on businesses due to the lockdown. CaaS enables the optimisation
costs associated with cooling and redirects business expenses where
needed to accelerate growth.
A COLLABORATIVE EFFORT
In March 2020, Sphere Solutions, GFA Climate & Infrastructure, and
BASE met with the five leading commercial banks in South Africa
to present the funding structure of CaaS and the first projects to be
implemented by Sphere Solutions. One of the five banks will be selected
as the funder to partner with GFA, Sphere Solutions and BASE to then
approach a leading South African retailer who will hopefully recognise
the significant benefits of CaaS as a way to convert stores to more
efficient and cost reducing refrigeration, and accelerate recovery after
the COVID-19 lockdown.
HOW DOES CAAS WORK?
To promote the use of more efficient and environmentally friendly
refrigeration solutions, CaaS will be primarily available for systems
utilising transcritical CO₂ technology. Refrigeration solutions are
shecco
Cooling as a Service workshop participants in Cape Town.
designed to meet the cooling requirements on a case-by-case basis
taking into account the utilisation and cabinets capacities. The option to
add cabinets in the cooling service will be a natural evolution to ensure
optimisation of the system and increase the off-balance sheet product
offering. Due to clients utilising less than 50% of their installed capacity
on average, modular design is being considered where a mobile
capacity can be used for the initial cooling of products; the ability to
provide a modular solution will be dependent on the ease of access to
designated areas.
The operation, maintenance and monitoring of the system forms
part of CaaS to ensure short responsive callouts. Maintenance teams
are optimally situated to guarantee on-site presence within two hours
of fault detection and does not require client staff for the monitoring or
maintenance of any equipment relating to the cooling system.
Transcritical CO 2
systems are manufactured, installed and
maintained for many different applications, including small store
formats (convenience stores), supermarkets and hypermarkets, and
industrial sites. Across this range, different technologies have been
used. Booster systems, with the addition of parallel compression,
ejectors, different suction groups, as well as adiabatic gas coolers
allow for increased efficiency over freon systems. Although CO 2
systems operate at higher pressures than CO 2
, components are being
manufactured to handle this.
A big advantage of using CO 2
as a refrigerant, is that it has very little
to no environmental impact as it is a natural refrigerant. It is also not
flammable or toxic. Its cost is significantly lower than that of freon gas
– which is bound to escalate even more in the future, with regulations
constantly becoming stricter for the use of freon as a refrigerant. The
capital cost of CO 2
systems is higher, however, through energy savings
the payback period can be as little as between one and five years.
This capital cost difference is reducing over time, as CO 2
technology
improves, and more suppliers enter the market. RACA
www.hvacronline.co.za RACA Journal I August 2020 7