Energy Storage

About San Mig Food Ave

San Mig Food Ave is a popular convenience store chain based in the Philippines. Stores offer ready-to-eat products, snacks, and beverages for people on the go.

High Electric Bills to Keep It Cool Inside

A major challenge that San Mig faces is finding ways to lower its overhead costs, especially skyrocketing electric bills. Like all businesses that sell food, San Mig stores require a cool environment for customers and employees alike. However, air conditioning is costly, especially when it’s functioning 24/7 in countries with hot and humid weather.

Also, many of the foods and beverages must be kept refrigerated or frozen. As such, the cold wall units give off a significant amount of heat, warming up the inside of the convenience store. In effect, the AC units are working twice as hard to keep food cold or frozen and maintain the store’s cool temperature.

In times of high energy demand, the store could encounter a brownout or even a total power outage.

The Success of Enovatek’s Solar Hybrid Air Conditioning in Lowering Electric Bills

Given that we are a company that manufactures air conditioners capable of converting solar energy to electrical energy, we solved San Mig’s challenge of keeping cool and maintaining functional chillers and freezers without paying high electric bills every month.

To prove it, we set up a test in a San Mig store. First, we installed our hybrid AC without solar panels. We also installed our system with solar panels. This way, we could measure how much of a difference the solar panels made in reducing electric bills.

Here’s a closeup photo of the solar air conditioning units inside the store.

We let them operate until the ambient indoor temperature was a comfortable 24℃.

Here’s a quick summary of some of the most remarkable results of this experiment:

We can conclude from this data that the AC units with more solar panels used the least electricity.

This translated into big savings for San Mig.

Solar Savings from Enovatek That Never End…and Good for the Planet, too

We also measured the temperatures behind San Mig’s chillers and freezers and realized that they  could get as high as 38 ℃.

As a result, this additional heat source raised the temperature inside the store to 30-35℃ around the chillers and freezers. To offset the temperature increase, we recommended adding a third solar hybrid air conditioning unit located directly above the chillers and freezers.

This is a schematic drawing of the store layout showing the placement of two of the three solar AC units. The recommended third unit was placed close to the chillers and freezers.

Since the solar AC units do not consume large amounts of energy, San Mig could justify adding the third unit without a significant initial or maintenance cost.

As such, San Mig saved up to 90% on electricity costs with our solar air conditioning units.

Here’s a comparison look at the average electricity bills in United States dollars (USD) based on the existing AC unit that San Mig used versus our solar products (based on an estimated cost of USD$0.17/KW):

It is clear from this data table that our air conditioning unit — even without solar panels — is significantly more cost-effective than a conventional AC unit. Our system with solar panels results in even greater savings.

For example, San Mig can save up to US$131.32 every month on electricity simply by upgrading their air conditioners. That’s an approximate 40% savings.

Also, the ROI breakeven time for San Mig was only 22 months.

Plus, you will help lower carbon emissions responsible for climate change by reducing your store’s carbon footprint.

Location: Philippines