When people think of critical infrastructure, they tend to propose rail networks, hospitals or electricity networks. But one of the most essential everyday technologies is in almost every kitchen: the fridge.
In contrast to Enlightenment, which can be replaced by candles in an emergency, cooling does not have an easy replacement. When the power goes out, food spoils quickly, medicines lose the effectiveness and subsistence means depending on selling cold drinks or ice.
As climate change occurs more often and serious weather conditions, the resulting Black -outs and Brownouts are becoming more and more often in favor. Rasters who were stable once are more and more burdened. The major Iberian Black -Out who hit Spain and Portugal earlier this yeartogether with Storm Darragh In the UK (also known as Xaveria in Germany), the vulnerabilities of even the most developed systems emphasized.
In many parts of Africa and Asia, people live every day with these disorders. And while schedules in Europe and North America are confronted with increasing pressure, their experience is starting to look less like an exception and more like a preview of the future.
A new standard for weak and off-grid refrigerators
This recognizing the IEC has been completed IEC 63437A standard for domestic and light commercial refrigerators that are designed for weak and unreliable or intermittent electricity stocks, as well as for off-grid refrigerators that are designed to be driven directly by photovoltaic (PV) solar panels.
Patrick Beks, director and co-owner of the Dutch company Re/Gent BV, has led much of the work on the document inside IEC TC 59The technical committee that draws up standards for the implementation of household appliances. His company grew from the former R&D Laboratories of Philips. “There are many areas in Africa Bezuiden the Sahara and other parts of the world where reliable cooling does not exist,” Beks explains.
IEC 63437 introduces simple classifications. Delivery lessons show how long a refrigerator can continue to cool during malfunctions – for example four hours on and 20 hours off. Voltage classes indicate the range of fluctuations that a device can survive, from as low as 30% to 200% of the nominal food. De Standaard also prescribes sun classes, which represent various supply signals generated by a solar panel.
“It presents information about the power failure with which a refrigerator can be displayed while still cooling, and the voltage fluctuations that can tolerate it. With that label, people can select the right fridge for their region,” says Beks.
The standard also defines test procedures: how quickly a refrigerator cools, how long this temperature retains during blackouts and how it deals with voltage stress. It is important that it does not prescribe how a refrigerator should be built, just how performance and energy consumption should be measured.
“If you have a generator, how long do you have to perform it every day before the fridge stays cold for 24 hours? Those are the kind of questions that helps this standard,” says Duncan Kerridge, a senior R&D engineer, formerly with Surechill, who now contributes to IEC work.
A big obstacle has defined what “weak grid” means. “There is a real lack of information about the quality of delivery,” Kerridge notes. “There are isolated studies, but drawing a conclusion is difficult because there is no consistency.” Governments and utility companies often make things worse by being reluctant to share dropout data, for fear of reputation damage, he adds.
But as Kerridge notes, monitoring does not have to be expensive: “You can compile simple microcontrollers for around GBP 100. The challenge is that they are implemented broadly and ensure that they all measure the same parameters.” BEKS hopes that the introduction of the standard will stimulate more monitoring. “Once the norm has been used, it will also initiate investigations in specific regions,” he says.
Grilles for emerging countries
While IEC 63437 focuses on devices, Kerridge also helps to draw up a technical report on “developing graters” in a working group from IEC TC 8, which standardizes the equal quality. This will determine how to assess the reliability of electricity in countries with low and middle incomes a first step towards global consistency. For now, the group is concentrating on the base: whether the power is on or off, which voltage ranges are typical and which types of fluctuations the most damage devices.
In addition to the standards, researchers test new technologies to make refrigerators more resilient under weak grid and off-grid conditions. A promising approach is cooling of solar energy, which drives cooling directly from PV panels without trusting external batteries. Instead, thermal storage in the cabinet retains cold temperatures at night or during cloudy spells.
Ivan Katic, a senior specialist at the Danish Technological Institute (DTI)Leads an initiative with a funded initiative in which it is investigated how this approach can go beyond vaccine refrigerators to the cold cooling chain of the food. Scaling up has required new hardware. Although the changeover market (AC) has many large compressors, it is difficult to adjust them for direct electricity (DC) solar energy. The Katic team collaborated with a Danish manufacturer of frequency converters and compressors to develop a variable converter that can perform a standard compressor directly from solar panels.
Specialized software then adjusts the power consumption, depending on how much sunlight is available. “We have proven that it is possible,” says Katic. “The converter can adjust automatically, so that the refrigerator continues to run, even while the range fluctuates.”
Examples in Kenya and the Philippines
To prove the concept, the project is the construction of demonstration units: freezers for fishing communities in Kenya and refrigerators for a dairy producer in the Philippines. In Kenya the challenge is special acute: freezing fish requires large amounts of energy and the risk of failure of the catch. The solution is to integrate saltwater -based thermal storage into the freezers, which maintains the temperatures under zero overnight. “The idea is that the content remains cold, even when the power dives. In this way the fish is preserved and losses are reduced,” says Katic.
The project, carried out in collaboration with the WWFWill test whether technology can strengthen local fishing and reduce waste. In the Philippines, the goal is to help dairy factories to keep milk cold in rural areas where the grid power is unreliable. Both pilots offer field data about performance and costs – essential for scaling up.
But commercialization remains difficult. Cabinets with integrated phase change materials (PCM) storage are duration and advanced converters and software add further costs. At the same time, competition from solar stick systems can undermine the attraction of stand-alone units. “For distributed small -scale systems it has a promising future, but for larger commercial industrial systems it can be more cost -effective to introduce a local grid on which you can trust,” says Katic. He remains optimistic: “If refrigerators are luxurious and costs, this will be a good technology.”
IEC -standards can also help with the thermal technology for solar energy: IEC TC 117 Prepares the standards for thermal power plants for solar energy and looks more and more Standardizing thermal applications for solar energy For the industry.
Lessons for the worldwide north
Although the pilots of IEC 63437 and Katic are designed for the worldwide south, climate change fades the line between “developing” and “developed” graters. “The use of weak grid refrigerators in combination with smart grilles in the developed world is also an expected future trend. The idea is to use electricity when it is available and cheap and not to use it if it is scarce and expensive,” says Bek.
“I don’t know how bad things are going to get with climate change, but if supply signals deteriorate and grids get worse in the developed world, you could of course use this standard,” he adds. Kerridge agrees. For domestic refrigerators can help simple steps such as keeping the door closed during malfunctions. But for hospitals and pharmacies, the bet is higher. “It is about vulnerability and criticism of the load. During Storm Daragh, my wife’s pharmacy had to replace medicines after a 24 -hour interference,” he recalls. The World Health Organization (WHO) is already taking a note. It has its own electronic pre qualification system (EPQS) For vaccine refrigerators about intermittent and solar offering, and according to Beks there is interest in coordinating future work with IEC benchmarks.
The work of Katic also illustrates what the next generation of solutions could look like: battery -free sunbacks of solar cabinets that serve fishing, dairy factories and small companies. By combining technical standards with innovative design, researchers hope to make cooling cooling more reliable for everyone.
Author: Ann-Marie Corvin
The International electrical engineering committee (IEC) is a global, non-profit membership organization that brings together 174 countries and coordinates the work of 30,000 experts worldwide. IEC international standards and conformity assessment are based on international trade in electrical and electronic goods. They facilitate access to electricity and verify the safety, performance and interoperability of electrical and electronic devices and systems, including consumer devices such as mobile phones or refrigerators, office and medical equipment, information technology, electricity generation and much more.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author, and do not necessarily reflect it by PV -Magazine.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to work with us and reuse part of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
