ADVERTISEMENT
  • About
  • Contact
  • Testimonials
  • Demographics & Advertising Rates
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Search
    Generic filters
    California Business Journal
    57 °f
    Los Angeles
    56 ° Thu
    54 ° Fri
    53 ° Sat
    55 ° Sun
    57 ° Mon
    56 ° Tue
    • Front Page
    • Business
      • Insurance
      • Real Estate
    • Finance
      claiming gambling losses on your taxes

      Can you claim gambling losses on your taxes?

      Nicholas Yrizarry

      In Perfect Alignment

      Invest-in-Your-Childs-Future

      Start Investing Now For Your Child’s Future

      IMG 8554 - From a “Wish List” to a “Reality List”

      From a “Wish List” to a “Reality List”

    • People
    • Featured
      law swirl stairs

      Down and Dirty

      284 RUdQVDAwNTEuanBn

      The Rising Phenomena of Solar Energy Hits A New Gear in California

      Silicon V Real Instituto

      The Entrepreneurs ‘Angell’

      West Gary, MinTech’s Chief Technical Officer2

      Dust Buster

      Flags-of-the-world

      The Impact of Covid: Racing to Buy Second Citizenships

    • Technology
      West Gary, MinTech’s Chief Technical Officer2

      Dust Buster

      electric vehicle charging station 2

      The Electrification of Transportation

      Plaxonic Technologies Innovate

      Plaxonic Technologies: Leading Innovation

      tech devises of the future - Latest Devices to Make Our Lives Easier

      Latest Devices to Make Our Lives Easier

    • Law
      LLC

      What Is an LLC and How Does It Work Exactly?

      law books

      Career paths available with a law degree

      background-check

      How Do Background Check Sites Find Your Information?

      hurricane

      Weathering the Storm

    • News
      Reborn Cabinets, Anaheim, Calif.

      BBB Torch Awards Recognize Orange County Businesses

      AB3088

      California COVID-19 Rent Relief Policies Economically Unsustainable

      american-flag

      Dreamers Won Full Restoration of DACA…What Now?

      Airplane Landing

      London Heathrow one step closer to controversial third runway

    • Human Interest
      • Food
      • Art & Culture
    • Education
      Businessman stressed with lost data

      Important Facts About Recovery Point Objective (RPO) in Your Business

      101-5 Benefits of Solar Energy in Florida

      5 Benefits of Solar Energy in Florida

      homeowners-insurance1

      5 Ways to Lower Your Homeowner’s Insurance Costs in California

      Stock market success

      5 Facts About Storefront Lenders

    • Health & Fitness
      The Surprising Link Between Gut Health and Mental Health - The Surprising Link between Gut Health and Mental Health

      The Surprising Link between Gut Health and Mental Health

      Eesha Patel feature

      Multi-Dimensional Reality

      166521182

      One Hour Each Morning for the Remaining 23

      87 CBN vs CBD How Are the Benefits Different - Commonly Asked Questions About CBD Oil in the USA

      Commonly Asked Questions About CBD Oil in the USA

    California Business Journal
    • Front Page
    • Business
      • Insurance
      • Real Estate
    • Finance
      claiming gambling losses on your taxes

      Can you claim gambling losses on your taxes?

      Nicholas Yrizarry

      In Perfect Alignment

      Invest-in-Your-Childs-Future

      Start Investing Now For Your Child’s Future

      IMG 8554 - From a “Wish List” to a “Reality List”

      From a “Wish List” to a “Reality List”

    • People
    • Featured
      law swirl stairs

      Down and Dirty

      284 RUdQVDAwNTEuanBn

      The Rising Phenomena of Solar Energy Hits A New Gear in California

      Silicon V Real Instituto

      The Entrepreneurs ‘Angell’

      West Gary, MinTech’s Chief Technical Officer2

      Dust Buster

      Flags-of-the-world

      The Impact of Covid: Racing to Buy Second Citizenships

    • Technology
      West Gary, MinTech’s Chief Technical Officer2

      Dust Buster

      electric vehicle charging station 2

      The Electrification of Transportation

      Plaxonic Technologies Innovate

      Plaxonic Technologies: Leading Innovation

      tech devises of the future - Latest Devices to Make Our Lives Easier

      Latest Devices to Make Our Lives Easier

    • Law
      LLC

      What Is an LLC and How Does It Work Exactly?

      law books

      Career paths available with a law degree

      background-check

      How Do Background Check Sites Find Your Information?

      hurricane

      Weathering the Storm

    • News
      Reborn Cabinets, Anaheim, Calif.

      BBB Torch Awards Recognize Orange County Businesses

      AB3088

      California COVID-19 Rent Relief Policies Economically Unsustainable

      american-flag

      Dreamers Won Full Restoration of DACA…What Now?

      Airplane Landing

      London Heathrow one step closer to controversial third runway

    • Human Interest
      • Food
      • Art & Culture
    • Education
      Businessman stressed with lost data

      Important Facts About Recovery Point Objective (RPO) in Your Business

      101-5 Benefits of Solar Energy in Florida

      5 Benefits of Solar Energy in Florida

      homeowners-insurance1

      5 Ways to Lower Your Homeowner’s Insurance Costs in California

      Stock market success

      5 Facts About Storefront Lenders

    • Health & Fitness
      The Surprising Link Between Gut Health and Mental Health - The Surprising Link between Gut Health and Mental Health

      The Surprising Link between Gut Health and Mental Health

      Eesha Patel feature

      Multi-Dimensional Reality

      166521182

      One Hour Each Morning for the Remaining 23

      87 CBN vs CBD How Are the Benefits Different - Commonly Asked Questions About CBD Oil in the USA

      Commonly Asked Questions About CBD Oil in the USA

    Search
      Generic filters
      California Business Journal

      COLD AND CALCULATED

      by Eve Gumpel, California Business Journal
      A A
      1 - COLD AND CALCULATED
      Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

      California-based Ice Energy provides reliable energy storage for air conditioners, reducing demand on the electrical grid.

      What if you could come up with a low-cost, reliable and “green” way to store energy on a large scale and ease demand on the electrical grid?

      That was the goal the three founding partners of Ice Energy – Frank Ramirez, Brian Parsonnet and Greg Tropsa – set for themselves in 2003. Their solution? A battery for air conditioners, particularly commercial air conditioners. “They knew air conditioners use a lot of electricity, and if you could store what they create – cooling – that would be a ‘cool thing,’” Ice Energy CEO Mike Hopkins says. “It was an opportunity rife with promise since the electric grid is a system that has to produce energy and deliver it to the consumer in real time, yet couldn’t really store it.”

      The founders hired Hopkins, an attorney at the time, to create the company, get it organized and raise $500,000 to get them out of the garage they were working in. Ice Energy launched in 2005 – and it was way ahead of the market.

      ADVERTISEMENT

      Electric utilities, grid operators and businesses weren’t ready to think of energy storage as a regular part of the electricity grid. “Frank, Brian and Greg ended up doing 40 different pilot projects to prove that it worked, to prove that it could be deployed, to prove that it was reliable,” Hopkins says.

      The early years were daunting for Ice Energy – and the industry. “During that period, a number of other storage companies went under,” Hopkins says.

      Yet Ice Energy stuck with it, and in 2013 the market finally took off – coincidentally, the same year Hopkins took over as CEO. He says the market trigger was California Assembly Bill 2514, which mandated utilities – especially investor-owned utilities – to start procuring minimum quantities of energy storage.

      Ice Energy CEO Mike Hopkins
      Ice Energy CEO Mike Hopkins

      “In the last five years, there’s been a tremendous growth of the market for energy storage,” he says. Utilities and businesses are buying it in large scale. Even homeowners are adopting energy storage “in a way they never have before,” Hopkins adds. “It’s a cool, modern thing to do. The business is thriving. It just took a long time.”

      The company’s Ice Bear looks like a standard, rooftop commercial-industrial air conditioner. It’s the same size and shape and has most of the same parts. It also has a water tank with a heat exchanger suspended in the water tank. As Hopkins explains, “It creates cooling by freezing the water in the tank and it holds onto that ice until it’s needed.”

      During the hottest part of the day, when demand for electricity is high and air conditioners are working their hardest, the Ice Bear turns off the air conditioner’s compressor and operates a low-wattage pump. It pumps refrigerant through the ice block, over the air conditioner, and then the air conditioner’s fan blows that ice-cold refrigerant through the building. It takes six hours for the ice to melt. When that happens, the Ice Bear switches back to the air conditioner, and the process begins again.

      Related

      101-5 Benefits of Solar Energy in Florida

      5 Benefits of Solar Energy in Florida

      January 26, 2021
      homeowners-insurance1

      5 Ways to Lower Your Homeowner’s Insurance Costs in California

      January 26, 2021
      Load More

      download - COLD AND CALCULATEDIce Energy also has a residential product, the Ice Cub, which will begin selling in California later this year. Unlike the Ice Bear, it’s not an add-on. It replaces the conventional air conditioner. It functions like a normal air conditioner and freezes water in its ice tank at the same time. The Ice Cub can cool a home for four hours without using electricity. It works especially well with solar power.

      Both products are designed to last 20 years. Along with annual physical maintenance checks, the systems have sensors that collect data from the Ice Bear and the air conditioner connected to it. “That’s another reason our products last so long,” Hopkins says. Monitoring means Ice Energy knows right away when a problem arises.

      In the past 18 months, Ice Energy has begun selling the Ice Bear directly to businesses. But according to Hopkins, “Most sales are to utilities that buy our product and want us to install them in the right part of grid to fix a problem they’ve identified.

      It fixes the utility’s problem at a fraction of the cost of building more substations or adding more transmission lines. “You go in, you add Ice Bears to the air conditioners, and the source of the problem – which is too much demand at wrong time of day – is eliminated,” Hopkins says. “It’s shifted to a different time when the grid has lots of capacity.”

      2 - COLD AND CALCULATEDIn Orange County, Calif., Ice Energy has a 26-megawatt program under way with Southern California Edison. Under that program, a building in a high-demand location in Orange County – especially those with old air conditioners – can qualify for free Ice Bear units fully installed and maintained for free by Ice Energy.

      “We’re going to be placing 1,800 Ice Bears in Orange County over the next three years,” Hopkins says.

      In some cases, businesses will get either discounts or free new air conditioners if they have old air conditioners. As a result of the program, most of the air conditioners in Orange County will be more efficient, and utilities will have the ability to eliminate their electricity consumption during these key periods of the day, Hopkins says.

      Other current projects include City of Riverside Public Utilities, where Ice Energy is replacing old air conditioners with Ice Bears at the rate of one megawatt per year, and the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, where the company is installing residential units on the Island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, to eliminate the need for a new transmission line to the island.

      Hopkins describes Ice Energy as a product development and management company. “The whole business was designed to be outsourced as much as possible,” he says. The products are manufactured by Mercury Corp. in Hammondsport, New York, and are installed and serviced by local heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) contractors that Ice Energy trains, hires and manages.

      “We’re just under 30 people and, going forward, I don’t see us being much bigger than 50 people, even as we go worldwide – which is our plan for later this year,” Hopkins says.

      Initial markets will be Australia and Saudi Arabia. Both are ideal targets, especially as Saudi Arabia has the highest per-capita usage of air conditioning in the world. “There may be other places; we’re in discussions,” Hopkins says. “Our product is not just great for air conditioning and cooling. It’s a way of storing solar and wind, too.

      “Ultimately,” he adds, “we want Ice Bears wherever there are commercial air conditioners. We want them everywhere, in every country, because we think it’s the most cost-effective and environmentally positive way of cooling buildings.

      “In the case of our home product, we want to see it replace conventional air conditioners.” Air conditioners are bad for the environment, he points out, “and they’re basically very dumb. They don’t do anything positive for the grid.”

      screen - COLD AND CALCULATED

       

       

      Ice Energy 

      1575 Sunflower Ave.

      Costa Mesa, CA  92626

      TEL: 877.542.3232

      Web: www.ice-energy.com

      e-mail info@ice-energy.com

       

      Tags: air conditionersair conditioningattorneyAustraliaCACaliforniaCEOcommercialcontractorsConventionalCosta Mesadevelopmentelectricityenergyenergy storagegreenheatingHVACIce EnergyindustrialinvestorlocalMikeMike HopkinsNew YorkOrange Countypowerreducing demand on electrical gridresidentialriversidesolarSouthern Californiastorageventilation

      Get real time update about this post categories directly on your device, subscribe now.

      Unsubscribe
      ADVERTISEMENT
      Previous Post

      PLANNING FOR THE UNTHINKABLE

      Next Post

      THE VALUE OF CULTURE: ONE OF THE MANY TOPICS AT FP&A FOR TECHNOLOGY SUMMIT

      Eve Gumpel, California Business Journal

      Eve Gumpel, California Business Journal

      Eve Gumpel has a special place in the heart of California Business Journal. One of CBJ’s original writers, Eve passed away in 2020. Her contribution to CBJ will be felt forever. One of classiest, sweetest and most professional individuals you could ever encounter, Eve was the Founder of Good Writing Matters. Rest in Peace Eve. We love you. #NeverForget

      WHAT TO READ NEXT

      Businessman stressed with lost data
      Education

      Important Facts About Recovery Point Objective (RPO) in Your Business

      January 26, 2021
      101-5 Benefits of Solar Energy in Florida
      Education

      5 Benefits of Solar Energy in Florida

      January 26, 2021
      homeowners-insurance1
      Education

      5 Ways to Lower Your Homeowner’s Insurance Costs in California

      January 26, 2021
      Stock market success
      Education

      5 Facts About Storefront Lenders

      January 26, 2021
      What a Legalization of Sports Betting Approval Would Mean for California's Economy
      Education

      What Legalization of Sports Betting Approval Would Mean for California’s Economy

      January 25, 2021
      How to Boost Your Resume in a Competitive Job Market
      Education

      How to Boost Your Resume in a Competitive Job Market

      January 25, 2021
      Next Post
      download 1 - THE VALUE OF CULTURE: ONE OF THE MANY TOPICS AT FP&A FOR TECHNOLOGY SUMMIT

      THE VALUE OF CULTURE: ONE OF THE MANY TOPICS AT FP&A FOR TECHNOLOGY SUMMIT

      Follow Us

      ADVERTISEMENT

      Categories

      • Art & Culture
      • Business
      • Editor's Choice
      • Education
      • Featured
      • Finance
      • Food & Dining
      • Health & Fitness
      • Human Interest
      • Insurance
      • Law
      • Marketing
      • Medical
      • News
      • People
      • Popular
      • Real Estate
      • Social Media
      • Technology
      • Uncategorized

      CBJ Partner Firebrand Media

      Laguna Beach Independent Newspaper

      Laguna Beach Magazine

      Laguna Beach City Guide

      On The Menu Laguna Beach

      Newport Beach Independent Newspaper

      Newport Beach Magazine

      Newport Beach Country Club Magazine

      Coastal Real Estate Guide (NB,LB, CDM)

      Montage Magazine

      Monarch Beach Resort Magazine

      Pacific Coast Magazine (SoCal)

      Omni Escapes Hotel Magazine

      Sea Island Life Magazine

      Salamander Hotel & Resorts Magazine

      Bespoke Concierge New York

      Evans Hotels

      View our entire portfolio here

      ADVERTISEMENT
      ADVERTISEMENT
      Facebook Twitter LinkedIn LinkedIn Instagram
      C B J   LOGO  SVG-01
      • About
      • Contact
      • Testimonials
      • Demographics & Advertising Rates

      Newsletter

      Top Stories

      • Judge gavel, scales of justice and law books in court

        Lawsuit Basics: How Much Does It Cost to Sue Someone?

        0 shares
        Share 0 Tweet 0
      • REPORT: TECH GIANT CISCO ABOUT TO LAY OFF 14,000

        0 shares
        Share 0 Tweet 0
      • Who is part scientist, inventor, anthropologist, explorer, designer, engineer, architect, reporter, journalist, museum curator, travel guide, therapist, teacher, trainer and athletic coach?

        0 shares
        Share 0 Tweet 0

      Latest Articles

      Businessman stressed with lost data

      Important Facts About Recovery Point Objective (RPO) in Your Business

      January 26, 2021
      101-5 Benefits of Solar Energy in Florida

      5 Benefits of Solar Energy in Florida

      January 26, 2021
      homeowners-insurance1

      5 Ways to Lower Your Homeowner’s Insurance Costs in California

      January 26, 2021

      California Business Journal | California Business News, California News Media, California business articles | Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego, Inland Empire, Northern California, San Francisco | Huntington Beach CA 92649 | (949) 648-3815
      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY CALIFORNIA BUSINESS JOURNAL.
      Site Design by 1REALTOUR

      Search
        Generic filters
        • Front Page
        • Business
          • Insurance
          • Real Estate
        • Finance
        • People
        • Featured
        • Technology
        • Law
        • News
        • Human Interest
          • Food
          • Art & Culture
        • Education
        • Health & Fitness

        California Business Journal | California Business News, California News Media, California business articles | Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego, Inland Empire, Northern California, San Francisco | Huntington Beach CA 92649 | (949) 648-3815
        ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY CALIFORNIA BUSINESS JOURNAL.
        Site Design by 1REALTOUR

        Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!