Everyone knows that saving energy is smart. Now BGE makes it easy. Signing up for the PeakRewardsSM Air Conditioning program can help you save money, reduce energy demand and protect the environment. By joining the PeakRewards Air Conditioning program, you will receive between $100 to $200 in bill credits from June — September. If you also sign up for the Electric Water Heater program, you could save up to an additional $50 in bill credits each November – February for a total of up to $250 in savings each year! When you enroll in the PeakRewards program, you agree to help ease high electricity demand by allowing BGE to “cycle” your air conditioning on and off with a professionally installed programmable thermostat or outdoor switch. Cycling typically occurs during the summer months, if there is a significant increase in peak energy demand between June 1 and September 30, your PeakRewards device will receive a signal to cycle your air conditioning. Cycling helps maintain reliable service while keeping down the cost of electricity for everyone.

What are emergency cycling events? During an emergency event, regional demand for electricity is close to surpassing regional supply and BGE is required to activate its PeakRewards program. This type of event is usually called to avoid potential brownouts and rolling blackouts. During an emergency event and the recovery period after the event, you cannot override your program participation. At these times, your air conditioning will be cycled up to your chosen cycling level – 50%, 75% or 100%. The PeakRewards program is completely voluntary and is open to all BGE residential customers with central air conditioning or an electric heat pump in good working order, regardless of their choice of electricity supplier. For more information on energy choice, click here. What are the benefits? Choose your cycling level, choose your savings. Choose a cycling level that best fits your lifestyle – 50%, 75% or 100%. Choose between a programmable thermostat or an outdoor air conditioner switch, professionally installed at your home at no out-of-pocket cost to you.

or call the PeakRewards customer hotline at 1-888-309-PEAK (7325). View Cycling Overview Chart Improve energy efficiency and maximize savings year-round with a thermostat that you can program to suit your daily household schedule. Click numbers on thermostat to learn more about product features. With PeakRewards Online Access, you can adjust your heating and cooling settings, and view cycling information from anywhere you can access the internet.who makes ducane ac units By participating in PeakRewards, you are taking a smart and easy step to:depreciation on hvac units Participate in both and you are guaranteed to receive whichever credit is greater on your summer bills.slimline air conditioning unitsSimply click here and fill out our online enrollment form.

Please Note: If you currently rent or lease your home, you must have permission from your landlord/property owner/manager to have the PeakRewards device installed. Ice storage air conditioning is the process of using ice for thermal energy storage. This is practical because of water's large heat of fusion: one metric ton of water (one cubic metre) can store 334 megajoules (MJ) (317,000 BTU) of energy, equivalent to 93 kWh (26.4 ton-hours). Ice was originally obtained from mountains or cut from frozen lakes and transported to cities for use as a coolant. The original definition of a "ton of cooling capacity" (heat flow) was the heat needed to melt one ton of ice in a 24-hour period. This heat flow is what one would expect in a 3,000-square-foot (280 m2) house in Boston in the summer. This definition has since been replaced by less archaic units: one ton HVAC capacity is equal to 12,000 BTU per hour. A small storage facility can hold enough ice to cool a large building from one day to one week, whether that ice is produced by anhydrous ammonia chillers or hauled in by horse-drawn carts.

Ground freezing can also be utilized; this may be done in ice form where the ground is saturated. Systems will also work with pure rock. Wherever ice forms, the ice formation's heat of fusion is not used, as the ice remains solid throughout the process. The method based on ground freezing is widely used for mining and tunneling to solidify unstable ground during excavations. The ground is frozen using bore holes with concentric pipes that carry brine from a chiller at the surface. Cold is extracted in a similar way using brine and used in the same way as for conventional ice storage, normally with a brine-to-liquid heat exchanger, to bring the working temperatures up to usable levels at higher volumes. The frozen ground can stay cold for months or longer, allowing cold storage for extended periods at negligible structure cost. Replacing existing air conditioning systems with ice storage offers a cost-effective energy storage method, enabling surplus wind energy and other such intermittent energy sources to be stored for use in chilling at a later time, possibly months later.

The most widely used form of this technology can be found in campus-wide air conditioning or chilled water systems of large buildings. Air conditioning systems, especially in commercial buildings, are the biggest contributors to peak electrical loads seen on hot summer days in various countries. In this application, a standard chiller runs at night to produce an ice pile. Water then circulates through the pile during the day to produce chilled water that would normally be the chiller's daytime output. A partial storage system minimizes capital investment by running the chillers nearly 24 hours a day. At night, they produce ice for storage and during the day they chill water for the air conditioning system. Water circulating through the melting ice augments their production. Such a system usually runs in ice-making mode for 16 to 18 hours a day and in ice-melting mode for six hours a day. Capital expenditures are minimized because the chillers can be just 40 - 50% of the size needed for a conventional design.

Ice storage sufficient to store half a day's rejected heat is usually adequate. A full storage system minimizes the cost of energy to run that system by entirely shutting off the chillers during peak load hours. The capital cost is higher, as such a system requires somewhat larger chillers than those from a partial storage system, and a larger ice storage system. Ice storage systems are inexpensive enough that full storage systems are often competitive with conventional air conditioning designs. The air conditioning chillers' efficiency is measured by their coefficient of performance (COP). In theory, thermal storage systems could make chillers more efficient because heat is discharged into colder nighttime air rather than warmer daytime air. In practice, heat loss overpowers this advantage, since it melts the ice. Air conditioning thermal storage has been shown to be somewhat beneficial in society. The fuel used at night to produce electricity is a domestic resource in most countries, so less imported fuel is used.

Also, studies show that this process significantly reduces the emissions associated with producing the power for air conditioners, since in the evening, inefficient "peaker" plants are replaced by low-emission base load facilities. The plants that produce this power often work more efficiently than the gas turbines that provide peaking power during the day. As well, since the load factor on the plants is higher, fewer plants are needed to service the load. A new twist on this technology uses ice as a condensing medium for the refrigerant. In this case, regular refrigerant is pumped to coils where it is used. Rather than needing a compressor to convert it back into a liquid, however, the low temperature of ice is used to chill the refrigerant back into a liquid. This type of system allows existing refrigerant-based HVAC equipment to be converted to Thermal Energy Storage systems, something that could not previously be easily done with chill water technology. In addition, unlike water-cooled chill water systems that do not experience a tremendous difference in efficiency from day to night, this new class of equipment typically displaces daytime operation of air-cooled condensing units.