Food Service Technology - Efficient Equipment, Including Ice Machines and Cooking Appliances

The primary objective of this Emerging Technologies project was to promote the California Energy Wise program through onsite monitoring at several different commercial foodservice establishments, comparing the energy use and cost differences when existing equipment in production kitchens are replaced with more energy-efficient models. A secondary objective was to explore the possibility of including an incentive for timers to be included in the California Energy Wise program for the purpose of load-shifting ice machines to non-peak periods.

To achieve these objectives, this project had three specific goals:

a) Identify sites to demonstrate and quantify the benefit of replacing equipment of low-or standard efficiency with high-efficiency, rebate-qualified models of similar size and production capacity.

b) Upsize the production and storage capacity of existing ice machines at selected sites to more energy-efficient models.

c) Demonstrate the potential of ice machine load-shifting at sites where ice machines were upsized, which also provided increased storage capacity to allow for ice production to be shifted to non-peak periods.