The cold energy storage business, Organic Heat Exchangers (O-Hx) has secured an agreement with a UK-based vertical farm to trial its revolutionary EnergiVault® - a trademarked/patented, cold thermal energy storage battery and charger system that provides dynamic cooling power for industrial refrigeration.

The purpose of the six-month trial is to test and demonstrate EnergiVault® on the vertical farm's environmental control system, assessing its value as part of the growing system's performance, environmental quality control, and economics.

The vertical farm offers fully automated controlled environment agriculture (CEA) platforms and the technology behind them helps growers optimise resource efficiency.

The CTO at the vertical farm said: "The potential value that EnergiVault can add to our operations is vast, and includes increased performance, power-flexing add-on, and straight-forward integration. We are hopeful that by integrating this technology into our systems we'll be able to deliver tangible benefits to our customers, increasing their operational efficiency and ultimately boosting their productivity both in terms of crop yield and profit."

Following the successful completion of the trial, this first-of-its-kind, AI-driven, EnergiVault® technology could enable an enhanced energy and performance package across the vertical farm infrastructure globally to enhance operational resilience, reduce energy costs and lower carbon emissions whilst satisfying the facilities' cooling requirements.

Geoff Barker, Product Director at O-Hx, said: "Following an extensive and successful commercial trial at a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility here in the UK, we're excited to be working on this project to bring this game-changing technology to the expanding vertical farming sector.

"EnergiVault is sector agnostic and presents a huge global opportunity for any industry that uses water chillers to deliver their cooling requirements - increasing resilience, reducing energy costs and supporting carbon reduction strategies across a wide range of settings from data centres to commercial buildings and farming operations."