Federal Law to Set the Standard on Walk-In Coolers and Freezers

By Dan Greenberg, Associate Director, E Source -- Foodservice Equipment & Supplies, 5/1/2008

With the exception of California, Connecticut, Maryland, Oregon or Rhode Island, foodservice operators’ walk-in coolers and freezers are not subject to efficiency standards of any kind. Even in these five states, standards have been in place for no more than four years, which means that essentially all existing walk-ins operating in the United States were built without reference to an efficiency standard of any kind. It would be wrong to conclude that energy efficiency has never been a consideration for manufacturers of walk-in refrigeration equipment. But optimizing efficiency in refrigerator and freezer design should be a big deal to foodservice operators because the typical facility spends about one-fifth of its energy dollar on refrigeration. 

This situation will begin to change on Jan. 1, 2009, because as of that date, all new walk-in refrigerators and freezers with a floor area of less than 3,000-square-feet installed in the United States will have to meet the requirements of an efficiency standard signed into law by President Bush in December 2007. Rather than specifying the daily energy consumption of a walk-in per unit volume as efficiency standards for other types of refrigerators and freezers do, the standard for walk-ins specifies that they utilize a variety of efficiency-boosting design elements.

Given the absence of prior standards, it’s not surprising that numerous cost-effective options for improving the efficiency of walk-ins exist. The new Federal standard requires a number of design elements, including:
• Automatic closers on exterior doors to minimize the amount of warm ambient air entering the walk-in.
• Interior strip curtains or swinging doors.
• Wall, ceiling and door insulation of at least R-25 for refrigerators and R-32 for freezers.
• Floor insulation of at least R-28.
• Higher-efficiency motors for the evaporator and condenser fans.
• Higher-efficiency lighting or occupancy sensors that turn lights off within 15 minutes if the walk-in is unoccupied.
• Double-pane (for refrigerators) or triple-pane (for freezers) glazing for walk-ins with any transparent doors or windows.
• Efficient anti-sweat (defrosting) systems for walk-ins that also have transparent reach-in doors.

How much will this improved efficiency cost? According to an analysis conducted for Pacific Gas & Electric in advance of California’s adoption of these standards, these features will add, on average, slightly less than $1,000 to the cost of a walk-in. The good news is that they’ll cut energy consumption by as much as 55 percent, yielding a simple payback to the user of 1.5 years for freezers and 3.4 years for refrigerators, on average.

The same legislation that established this standard also directs the Department of Energy to investigate further efficiency improvements that are technically feasible and economically justified. No later than Jan. 1, 2012, the Secretary of Energy is required to publish a performance-based efficiency standard (presumably in the form of so many kilowatt-hours per day per cubic foot of refrigerator or freezer volume) for walk-ins. This standard would then become effective either three or five years later, at the Secretary of Energy’s discretion.
If you’d like the details on these new requirements, see Section 312 of the Energy Independence and Security Act.