Simulation study using building-design energy analysis to estimate energy consumption of refrigerated container

Abstract

Refrigerated containers account for half of the total electricity consumption by storage yards and that this is expected to increase continuously each year. A refrigerated container is a special cargo container equipped with an integral refrigeration unit. The amount of power consumption of the refrigerated container will change depending on many external variables. Environmental factors mainly solar radiation received on the container walls caused surface temperatures increase will then affect the power consumption. This paper provides a simulation study on the estimation of energy consumption of refrigerated container. The simulation model performed on the building-design energy analysis used Integrated Environmental Solution (IES) software packages. The geometry of simulation model considers the actual dimension of refrigerated container consists of insulation walls in the three-dimensional analysis. Physical properties of the insulation walls and environmental factors used weather data are applied to the simulation model as parameter inputs. Estimation of energy consumption of the model based on the calculation of cooling load from the object considers the thermal effect from the sun energy. The measurement data from the experimentation was conducted by Shinoda and Budiyanto (2016) used as validation of simulation model. The comparison of energy consumption from simulation and measurement shows in shows in good agreement.