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Orugbo Studio

Cold room sizing calculator

A working example of what we build for cold storage and refrigeration companies. Built on the ASHRAE load calculation method.

Your room

Length, width and height. Any size, not only standard ones.

degrees C

kg arriving each day

Powering it with solar

the battery must carry

affects inverter size

Refrigeration capacity required
16.3kW
55,720 BTU/hr · 4.6 tons refrigeration
Room volume
75.0 m³
Holds about
22,500 kg
Insulation
100mm panel
Daily heat load
294 kWh
Send this specification on WhatsApp

Opens WhatsApp with the whole specification already written out.

Where the load comes from
Cooling and freezing the product188.4 kWh · 74%
Heat through walls and ceiling21.7 kWh · 8%
Air infiltration through the door15.9 kWh · 6%
Evaporator fans14.1 kWh · 6%
Defrost7.0 kWh · 3%
Heat through floor5.3 kWh · 2%
People working in the room2.6 kWh · 1%
Lighting0.6 kWh · 0%

Calculated by the five component method in ASHRAE Handbook, Refrigeration, chapter 24, with a 15 percent design margin over 18 running hours.

Power required to run it
9.4kW electrical
168 kWh per day · 61,497 kWh per year

At -18°C against a 30°C ambient the plant runs at a COP of 1.74, so each kW of cooling costs about 0.57 kW of electricity.

Solar system to run it · United Kingdom
Solar array
83.1 kWp
128 × 650 W panels
Roof area
396 m²
Battery
105 kWh
84 kWh usable
Inverter
12 kW
33 kW starting surge
  • At -18°C the plant achieves a COP of only 1.74, so every kilowatt of cooling costs about 0.57 kW of electricity. Freezing is expensive to run, which is what makes solar worth costing properly.
  • Sized for a direct on line compressor, so the inverter must survive a 33 kW starting surge. A soft starter would bring that down to about 17 kW and can meaningfully reduce the inverter you need to buy.
  • United Kingdom averages only 2.6 peak sun hours, so the array carries most of the cost here. A grid tied system with battery backup usually works out better than going fully off grid.

Want this on your own website?

This is the real thing, not a mockup. We build these for cold storage and refrigeration companies and put your own rates inside, so the number a visitor sees is one you would stand behind. It embeds in the site you already have with one line of code, or sits on a subdomain with a single DNS record. We never need access to your hosting.

Fixed price, fixed date, agreed in writing before anything starts. Tell us what people ask you before they buy and we will say honestly whether this is worth doing for you.

Email [email protected]About the studio