Running a supermarket means juggling several things at once.
Customers need a comfortable, temperate place to shop, even in the frozen food section; delis, butchers, and food-handling areas need hot water for hygiene; and staff areas need to stay comfortable over long opening hours.
Automatic Heating’s CO2 heat pumps are helping supermarkets and retail chains achieve these goals, all while meeting (and exceeding) sustainability targets.
Why supermarket heating and hot water demands are unlike other commercial buildings.
Supermarkets running a deli, bakery, butcher, or seafood counter are classed under the Australian Food Standards Code as handling unpackaged, potentially hazardous food.
Handwashing and sanitising are crucial in these high-risk sectors. A deli or bakery might wash down equipment and hand basins dozens of times an hour across a long trading day.
Space heating adds another layer. Supermarkets are often large, open buildings that need to stay comfortable for customers while cool rooms and freezer aisles push cold air into the same space.
Trading hours are long, demand rarely drops away, and a retail chain is repeating those same conditions across dozens of near-identical sites. That’s why supermarkets need heat pumps built for continuous, high-demand operation.
Why CO2 suits supermarket and retail applications.
A lot of Australian supermarkets already run transcritical CO2 refrigeration systems for display cases and cool rooms. Bringing CO2 heat pumps into the same site extends that same low-emission refrigerant strategy into heating and hot water, giving chains one consistent approach to cutting emissions.
Here’s what that gives a retail site:
- Global warming potential (GWP) of 1 and zero ozone depletion potential, against a GWP in the thousands for common HFC refrigerants, a direct cut to a site’s Scope 1 emissions
- Makes emissions reporting and reduction targets easier to track for stores already using CO2 for refrigeration systems
- Produces hot water up to 90°C from a single unit, removing the need for a supplementary gas-fired system and the emissions that come with it
- Future-proofing a site against Australia’s ongoing HFC phase-down under the Montreal Protocol Kigali Amendment
Jan Dusek, image courtesy of atmo.org
The same shift is further along in Europe, where retailers are working towards a firm deadline on synthetic refrigerants:
“European retailers spent a decade proving CO2 in refrigeration — now the same logic is reaching heating. A CO2 heat pump replaces the gas boiler, delivers high-temperature hot water, and takes the F-gas phase-down off the table permanently, which matters enormously as Europe’s 2027 rules approach.
HVAC is the new frontier of the F-gas exit, and the retailers moving first are drawing on proven CO2 heat pump experience from markets like Australia.”
— Jan Dusek, Co-founder & Group COO, ATMOsphere, publisher of NaturalRefrigerants.com
CO2 heat pump design is critical for supermarket installation.
Getting the best out of a CO2 heat pump comes down to engineering.
The heating hot water coil needs to allow cooler return water (ideally around 30°C) into the unit, otherwise the system loses efficiency.
Maintenance access to heating and hot water systems can be tricky, especially where rooftop or plantroom space is tight. The Revere CHP080Y is accessible from all four sides, which keeps routine maintenance straightforward where access is constrained.
For a supermarket weighing up decades of ownership costs, starting with good, efficient design and engineering protects long-term performance.
Once a system is commissioned, it also helps to be able to see how it’s actually performing. AHconnect provides a layer of monitoring and control across multiple sites and systems, which counts for a lot when a plant runs almost continuously and a gradual drop in efficiency can otherwise go unnoticed. We’ll cover this properly in a future edition.