The Alamo Heights Independent School District (AHISD) in San Antonio, Texas, is using CALMAC’s ice-based energy storage technology to cool more than 325,000 square feet across five buildings on its high school campus. The school district, which already uses a 500 kW solar system and another five solar arrays totaling 400 kW to help power daily operations, needed to further reduce energy consumption during expensive peak demand hours.
Installing CALMAC’s IceBank tanks at its high school campus has allowed the district to store cheap nighttime energy from the grid in the form of ice that can then be melted to cool buildings during the day. As a result, the district has reduced peak energy consumption by more than 20 percent, despite an increase in square footage and student population.
The school had recently added over 40,000 square feet, but its energy costs per square foot have actually gone down with the installation of the thermal energy storage system. The school says the energy storage system has also allowed it to maximize the effectiveness of solar and allow the district to expand without the need for extra chillers.
