In 2012 members of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Better Buildings Alliance (BBA) and its Refrigeration Project Team suggested that DOE focus on developing a best practices guide that retailers could follow when retrofitting open refrigerated supermarket display cases with transparent doors for energy reduction. In response, DOE set about researching and developing guidelines and suggestions for display case retrofits. The DOE report — presented in this five-part article series — outlines the results of this investigation, and was developed through collaboration between DOE, the BBA refrigeration team members, and key members of industry, including technical experts from supermarket refrigeration equipment manufacturing companies.
The report breaks down best practices and guidelines for conducting case retrofits by project stage, from initial planning through project completion and system monitoring. Namely, the guide highlights the following areas of the process: