Commercial Cooling

Ice Batteries For Peak Cooling

Icebreaker Energy builds and installs thermal ice batteries in commercial buildings. We freeze water at night, melt ice when it's hot, and cut cooling bills by avoiding expensive cooling during the hottest hours.

Make Ice At Night. Melt Ice to cool the building in the afternoon.
Night Charge storage

Run chiller overnight to freeze water during off-peak hours.

Afternoon Shift peak load

Lower hottest-hour chiller load by melting stored ice. Passively power HVAC system without losing comfort.

Lower Bills Cut peak-driven utility costs

Lower the expensive cooling spikes that drive demand charges. Save more money with cheaper night-time energy.

High bills from peak power

Commercial electric bills often have two parts: total energy used and the highest power draw during the billing cycle. Cooling spikes on hot afternoons increase both.

Energy charge
kWh used

You pay for the electricity consumed across the month.

Demand charge
Highest kW spike

You also pay for the single biggest power draw over any 15-minute period.

What Icebreaker does
Move cooling earlier

Store cold at night, then use stored ice during the hottest hours so the cooling peak is lower.

Shift Cooling Peaks, Save Money
Primary value
Lower the highest cooling kW

That single interval often sets a large share of the monthly bill.

Secondary value
Shift some kWh off-peak

Using energy at night (time-of-use pricing) adds additional savings.

Deployment
Integrates with existing HVAC

The system retrofits around existing chillers instead of replacing them.

Savings Model

SAVE WITH ICEBREAKER

Building size
100,000 sqft
50k 300k
Demand charge
$30/kW
$10 $60
Electricity price
$0.18/kWh
$0.08 $0.32
ENERGY SHIFTED
230,000 kWh shifted
Annual Cooling Bill Before vs. With Icebreaker
Peak load for building 450 kW
Peak load shifted 180 kW
Demand Charge ⬇️ $32,400
Previous cooling bill
$264,600
Demand charges $81,000
Energy charges $183,600
With Icebreaker
$217,710
Demand charges $48,600
Energy charges $169,110
Annual bill reduction $46,890
Major assumptions with this model

This model uses fixed demo assumptions plus your selected building size, demand charge, and electricity price. Every number on the right side is generated from the assumptions below.

Current model inputs and formulas Peak load = 100,000 sqft x 0.0045 kW/sqft = 450 kW
Building peak load Cooling peak intensity is fixed at 0.0045 kW/sqft, so a 100,000 sqft building is modeled at 450 kW peak cooling load.
Peak load shifted The model assumes Icebreaker shifts 40% of peak cooling load, so 180 kW of a 450 kW peak is moved out of the expensive interval.
Cooling season Demand-charge savings use a 6-month cooling season: 180 kW shifted x $30/kW x 6 months = $32,400/year.
Annual cooling energy Annual cooling energy is auto-derived at 7.2 kWh/sqft-year and rounded to 20,000 kWh increments, so 100,000 sqft becomes 720,000 kWh/year.
Energy shifted off-peak The model shifts 32% of annual cooling energy because moved energy share = min(42%, 40% x 0.8), so 720,000 kWh x 32% = 230,400 kWh shifted.
Off-peak energy discount Energy-charge savings assume a fixed 35% discount on shifted energy, so 230,400 kWh x $0.18/kWh x 35% = $14,515/year.
Bill comparison Baseline bill = demand charges + energy charges. With Icebreaker bill = baseline bill - annual demand savings - annual energy savings.
Icebreaker Energy

Lower Cooling Bills Now. Build A Thermal VPP Later.

Retrofit commercial buildings with ice batteries and lower utility bills by cutting hot-hour cooling peaks.

Later, turn a portfolio of buildings into dispatchable thermal load during grid strain to support city-scale energy needs.

Thermal virtual power plants (VPPs) pre-charge buildings at night, then use stored cooling across the fleet when the grid is under heat-driven strain. They shave hot-hour energy peaks.

Thermal VPP At Grid Scale
Peak Relief
Peak relief at the exact hours the grid is stressed

Cooling demand clusters on hot afternoons. A thermal VPP cuts load at the same time distribution feeders, substations, and system peaks are under the most strain.

Dispatch
Uses predictable commercial HVAC load

Cooling is recurring, weather-linked, and operationally understandable. That makes dispatch easier to plan and easier for utilities and building owners to trust.

Grid-scale impact
Huge grid-scale benefit without sacrificing comfort

A fleet of buildings can reduce coincident compressor demand, defer grid upgrades, lower peaker-plant use, and make the grid cleaner and more efficient while keeping occupants cool.

Nikko Ong
Founder

Nikko Ong

Founder of Icebreaker Energy

Nikko is a mechanical and thermal engineer with experience spanning defense-grade cooling systems, the hottest parts of commercial jet engines, and extensive writing on the grid and how technology can make it cleaner and more efficient.

He has worked as a product leader at a fintech company building AI systems at scale for 150M+ customers. He has a background in systems thinking, heat transfer, and HVAC technologies.

He founded Icebreaker Energy in 2025 with a desire to make cooling smarter. After experiencing a muggy NYC summer, he noticed how much outside heat was produced by our cooling systems and wanted to find a way to make cooling more efficient and less wasteful.

Writing

Blog Posts

Technical writing on thermal storage, cooling systems, demand charges, and thermal VPPs.

View all posts
Get In Touch

Interested in learning more or seeing a demo?

We're currently looking for commercial real estate partners to pilot our ice battery technology and help us build out our financial models with real-world data. If you're interested in cutting cooling bills and being at the forefront of grid-saving thermal VPPs, we'd love to chat.

Contact Us For A Demo