The most excellent team of instructors at the University of Wisconsin Madison — Director Doug Reindl, Assistant Director Todd Jekel, and Researcher Dan Dettmers — always have something interesting and valuable to add to the discussion of refrigeration energy efficiency in the real world. Here's a brief description of their latest offering, as published in "The Cold Front" this week. A link to the publication follows.
As efforts grow to curb energy use and reduce energy-related costs, the concept of “net-zero” buildings has garnered a great deal of attention recently. To date, the research and development efforts for net-zero energy building concepts have been aimed toward residential and commercial facilities. Several net-zero concepts for single family dwellings have been developed and demonstrated; however, the ability to achieve net-zero for larger commercial buildings presents a much more difficult challenge. There are virtually no studies that have considered the potential for a net-zero food production facility. Given the energy intensity of food production plants, the possibility of achieving net-zero for this type of facility is exponentially tougher when compared to a residential or small commercial building.