Power Quality for Cold Storage & Logistics
The compressors, fans and blast freezers in your cold store waste electricity before it reaches them, and HarmoniQ stops that waste at its source, without breaking the cold chain.
The Cold Chain Never Stops. Neither Does the Waste.
Your cold store runs refrigeration compressors, evaporator fans and blast freezers around the clock, many of them on variable-speed drives, with conveyors and dock equipment alongside. Between them they distort the current flowing through your facility, unbalance it, and draw current that does no work, so part of every kilowatt-hour you pay for never does useful work. It becomes heat, in your cables, your transformers and your motor windings.
It doesn't appear on your bill as a line of its own. It shows up as higher consumption, power-factor penalties, capacity charges, and compressors and motors that fail years before they should.
10–20%
Typical saving in kilowatt-hours on a cold store's low-voltage loads, by preventing the losses before they occur
Where the Waste Starts in a Cold Store
Three problems account for most of it, and each has a unit that sits where the problem starts.
Harmonic distortion
Compressor and fan drives
Variable-speed drives on the compressors and fans draw current in sharp pulses. The 5th and 7th harmonics ripple through the store, heating cables and transformers and upsetting the controls and sensors on the refrigeration plant.
FittedHarmoniQ Delta, at the drives
Reactive power
Compressors, freezers and conveyors
Compressor, freezer and conveyor motors draw current that does no work but still has to be supplied. Compressor starts and defrost cycles add demand spikes, inflating the apparent power you are billed for and the capacity you have to reserve.
FittedHarmoniQ Alpha at each machine, HarmoniQ Sigma at the incomer
Phase imbalance
Lighting and single-phase circuits
Lighting, offices and the other single-phase circuits around the store leave the three phases uneven. The difference flows down the neutral and sets up counter-rotating fields in your motors: heat without torque.
FittedHarmoniQ Alpha, at the load
Same Machines. Less Power.
With the waste prevented, the same cold store holds the same temperatures on fewer kilowatt-hours. With power-factor penalties gone and capacity charges lower too, that can take up to 25% off your total electricity bill where all three apply.
- Energy savings · kWh
- 10–20%
- Power factor
- 0.98+
- Equipment life · Arrhenius
- 2–4×
- Operational disruption
- 0
What We Hear, and the Reality
We hear
“Our compressors are new and efficient, so we don't have a power quality issue.”
The reality
A new compressor is more efficient at making cold, and its drive still draws current in sharp pulses. The energy saved shows up at the motor, and the distortion shows up everywhere else on the network. A store with more drives can carry more distortion than an older one with direct-on-line motors.
We hear
“Temperature compliance is about our refrigeration controls, not our power supply.”
The reality
Your controls decide the temperature, and they share a supply with the drives that distort it. If the plant shows temperature excursions you cannot explain, the supply is worth ruling out. Our engineers measure the network before anything is fitted, so you know whether it is a factor.
We hear
“We can't risk any interruption to our cold chain for an installation.”
The reality
HarmoniQ connects in parallel, alongside your circuits rather than in series with them, so no refrigeration circuit runs through it. It goes in with the compressors running, and the on/off test proves the saving at your own meter.
Three Steps. Zero Disruption.
01 · Assess
Measure the network
Our engineers measure your network and show you where energy is being wasted across the compressors, fans and defrost cycles, before anything is fitted.
02 · Install
Fit alongside your circuits
Each unit goes in where its problem starts, connected in parallel, with the plant running.
03 · Prove
Test it on and off
The on/off test proves the saving at your own meter, before any annual figure is quoted.
See What HarmoniQ Can Do for Your Cold Store
Our engineers will measure your site and show you exactly where energy is being wasted, and how much of it HarmoniQ can prevent.