Efficiency in Practice10 / 13
Ice Banks, Load Shifting & the Electric Dairy
Thermal storage lets a dairy buy its cold at night prices; MVR and heat pumps are electrifying the rest. The sector's route off the gas main.
10 min read · Jacob Willis, Net Zero Lead · Last reviewed July 2026
Dairies are quietly becoming the most electrifiable sector in food and drink, and the reasons were installed decades ago. The ice bank makes refrigeration schedulable, so a dairy can buy its cold when electricity is cheap; mechanical vapour recompression turned evaporation from the sector's biggest gas load into an efficient electrical one; and the heat the plant needs is low-grade enough for industrial heat pumps to supply. This lesson covers the load-shifting arithmetic first, then the electrification ladder it opens.
In this lesson
- 01The ice bank as a tradeable battery
- 02The electrification ladder
- 03Putting the module to work
- 04Sources and further reading