Refrigeration is the best load for solar. And the worst for demand charges.
Cooling runs continuously, all year, through the middle of the day — which makes refrigerated premises about the best commercial solar match there is. energy.gov.au states that in food and grocery stores refrigeration is the largest consumer of energy, operating non-stop and responsible for around half of total energy consumption. The same plant that makes the solar case is also the classic source of a demand peak that bills for twelve months. Both of those are worth understanding before you buy either.
Reviewed by the Mission Green commercial team · Updated August 2026
Why cooling and solar
fit together so well.
Continuous daytime load is exactly what commercial solar wants.
energy.gov.au states that in food and grocery stores, refrigeration is the largest consumer of energy, operating non-stop and responsible for around half of the store's total energy consumption. Lighting and general power including hot water make up around 25%, with HVAC comprising the remainder.
A load that runs non-stop and rises with ambient temperature is close to ideal for solar. Generation peaks on hot, clear days — which is precisely when cooling plant works hardest. Very little of the output needs to be exported, because there is always something to consume it.
That is why cold storage, refrigerated distribution, food retail and processing sites frequently show better commercial solar results than sites with far larger roofs and far more sporadic load.
Compressor starts
and the demand charge.
The same plant, working against you.
Motors starting together
Refrigeration compressors draw high current on start. Several starting within one measurement interval, particularly after a defrost cycle or a power interruption, produces a large short spike.
A 30-minute interval, in kVA
Demand is measured in apparent power over short intervals. SA Power Networks charges demand on the highest 30 minute interval in the last 12 months.
Twelve months of it
On an annual demand tariff, one such event sets a daily charge you keep paying for a year — long after the compressors settled down.
This is also where power factor becomes a live question rather than an abstract one. Motor-heavy sites can draw noticeably more apparent power than real power, and because demand is billed in kVA, that gap is billed too. Some networks price reactive power directly — SA Power Networks publishes an Excess kVAr incentive charge applied under its Service and Installation Rules.
Solar does not help with any of this. It reduces the energy you import; it does not stop three compressors starting in the same half-hour. Sequencing and soft starters do.
The question only
refrigerated sites ask.
Your stock does not care why the power went out.
On most commercial sites an outage is an inconvenience. On a refrigerated site it is a countdown against the value of everything in the room, and the cost of a long outage can exceed the cost of the plant protecting against it.
This changes the battery conversation meaningfully. On a typical commercial site a battery has to earn its return on demand-charge savings and arbitrage alone, and often does not. On a cold storage site there is a third term — avoided stock loss — and it can be the largest of the three.
Be precise about it, though. A battery sized for demand shaving is not automatically sized for backup, and a system that keeps the lights on will not necessarily start a compressor. If resilience is part of the business case, the backup requirement has to be specified as its own number: which plant, for how long, and starting from what state.
Cheaper things
to do first.
On a refrigerated site the plant is usually the bigger opportunity.
energy.gov.au notes that in this sector, starting with low-cost approaches to efficiency lets savings be achieved quickly and reinvested into more extensive upgrades. It highlights maintenance programs that identify equipment issues before they waste energy, and points to over-lighting as a common and cheaply fixed problem.
On refrigeration specifically, the highest-return items are usually unglamorous: door seals, strip curtains, defrost scheduling, condenser cleaning, and controls that stop plant fighting itself. None of it is a capital project and all of it reduces the load your solar then has to cover.
energy.gov.au also names split incentives between building owners and store managers as a sector challenge — the same structural problem that stalls solar on any leased premises, and worth resolving early if you do not own your building.
So what should
your business actually do?
Short version.
Fix the plant before you size the array. Seals, curtains, defrost timing and controls reduce the load permanently and cost a fraction of generation.
Find your demand peak and check what caused it. On refrigerated sites it is very often simultaneous compressor starts, and sequencing or soft starters address it directly.
Then size solar to the continuous load. This is the easy part on a refrigerated site, because the load is genuinely there all day.
Treat backup as a separate specification. Decide which plant must ride through an outage and for how long, and get that answered as its own number rather than folded into a payback.
Check whether power factor is costing you. Motor-heavy sites billed in kVA are the main case where correction genuinely pays, and it is easy to establish from a bill.
Cold storage solar:
your questions, answered.
It is one of the best. Cooling runs continuously and works hardest on hot, clear days, which is exactly when generation peaks, so very little output needs to be exported. energy.gov.au states that in food and grocery stores refrigeration is the largest consumer of energy, operating non-stop and responsible for around half of total energy consumption.
Usually because compressors draw high current when starting and several can start within one measurement interval, particularly after a defrost cycle or a power interruption. Demand is measured in apparent power over short intervals — SA Power Networks charges on the highest 30 minute interval in the last 12 months — so one such event can set a daily charge billed for the following year.
No, not reliably. Solar reduces the energy you import but does not prevent several compressors starting in the same half-hour. The interventions that address that are sequencing, soft starters and controls. A battery can shave a demand peak if it is sized and controlled specifically to do so.
It is one of the genuine cases. Motor-heavy sites can draw noticeably more apparent power than real power, and because demand is billed in kVA that gap is billed too. Some networks also charge for reactive power directly — SA Power Networks publishes an Excess kVAr incentive charge under its Service and Installation Rules. Check whether your bill has a kVA demand line or a reactive charge before proceeding.
Possibly, and it is a stronger case than on most commercial sites because avoided stock loss is a real third term alongside demand savings and arbitrage. But specify it properly: a battery sized for demand shaving is not automatically sized for backup, and one that keeps lights on may not start a compressor. State which plant must ride through, for how long, and from what starting state.
The plant. Door seals, strip curtains, defrost scheduling, condenser cleaning and controls that stop equipment fighting itself all reduce load permanently at a fraction of the cost of generation. energy.gov.au makes the same point for the sector generally — start with low-cost efficiency measures, achieve savings quickly, and reinvest them into larger upgrades.
Where these figures come from.
Sector figures from energy.gov.au, tariff mechanics from one distributor's published structures. No system prices — on a refrigerated site the load profile and the plant condition matter far more.