Ice Energy announced it will launch a new research and development center located in Riverside, California this summer. Among other projects Ice Energy will pursue a line of smaller residential solutions and continue to extend the range of applications supported by their award winning Ice Bear solution. The company recently was awarded a five-year contract from Riverside Public Utilities (RPU) to provide 5MW of behind-the-meter thermal energy storage using Ice Energy's proprietary Ice Bear system. In addition to research and development efforts the new 22,000 sq. ft. facility will serve as a staging area for the Riverside Ice Bear program and support Ice Energy's 25.6MW Southern California Edison (SCE) project.
“When selecting a location for our R&D facility we considered a number of California locations. The City of Riverside proved to be the clear winner,†said Mike Hopkins, CEO of Ice Energy. Explained Chris Tillotson, CIO and head of R&D for Ice Energy, “The City’s commitment to high technology business development in the form of grants and incentives, the University of California, Riverside and the growing number of high tech and HVAC businesses in the area all contributed significantly to our decision.â€
Ice Energy will be hiring a team of 12 to staff the center, which will serve as its primary research and development location and also its application engineering facility.
“The City is very pleased Ice Energy has selected Riverside as the location for its research and development base. While the City’s Ice Bear program is providing peak power reduction on the most impacted parts of our grid Ice Energy’s new R&D facility will be providing jobs, internships and learning opportunities for our community,†said Girish Balachandran, General Manager Riverside Public Utilities.
Like other public utilities in California, RPU and SCE are increasing their investment in preferred sources like energy storage. Ice Energy’s flagship commercial product, Ice Bear, attaches to one or more standard 5-20 ton rooftop commercial AC units and freezes ice at night when demand for power is low and capacity is abundant. The stored ice is used during the day to provide cooling instead of power-intensive ac compressors, effectively solving the problem of peak load management.
Almost 1,000 Ice Bear units are already installed in more than 40 different utility service territories nationwide, approaching 29 million hours of reliable operation.
