Demand side management in the cooling supply of brewing processes

Due to the increasing supply of volatile renewable energy, demand side management on the consumer side by temporally shifting electrical power demand is needed. Industrial cooling systems in particular offer great energy-flexibility potential since cooling energy is mostly electrically generated and almost all cooling systems already have thermal energy storage. Compared to other industrial sectors, the share of cooling energy demand in the food and beverage industry is particularly high. Especially in breweries, where large beer tanks require cooling, promising energy-flexibility potentials are expected. In order to quantify the technical energy-flexibility potential in the brewing process, relevant thermal energy consumers and process parameters are identified in a first step. Then, various energy-flexibility measures as well as their possible implementation barriers are identified and compared in terms of their technical energy-flexibility potential. The potential of the most promising energy-flexibility measure is then examined in detail by taking the cooling power demand and operating duration into consideration. The analysis shows that the focused beer cooling process in the storage tanks, accounts for around 45 % of the total cooling demand and can be shifted in time by up to 96 hours. Finally, the economic energy-flexibility potentials are determined. Taking advantage of the lowest electricity prices within one week, the results of a retrospectively optimized operation strategy show that energy cost savings of approx. 9 % can be achieved, without taking possibly increasing energy price fluctuations into account.