When facilities talk about cutting energy costs in climate control, the conversation usually goes straight to temperature or ventilation. Dehumidification rarely gets a seat at the table, which is a problem, because it’s often one of the biggest hidden drivers of energy cost in cold storage and food production environments.

Why temperature and ventilation alone don’t solve it

Humidity is frequently treated as a side effect that temperature control or ventilation will sort out on their own. In practice, neither does the job well on its own, or they do it, but at a much higher energy cost than necessary. Cooling air actually increases its relative humidity, heating air lowers relative humidity but at a real energy cost, and simply bringing in outdoor air can make indoor moisture worse, especially in summer. Ventilation and air conditioning manage climate, they were never designed to fully manage moisture.

Humid air costs more to cool

This is the part that tends to get missed: the more moisture there is in the air, the more energy it takes to cool it down. Based on Airwatergreen’s own technical data, air at or near saturation can cost up to roughly four times more to cool than dry air.

The knock-on effect shows up in two ways: either the facility burns more power to hit the same temperature, or it accepts a lower effective cooling capacity. Neither is a cost most facilities are tracking back to humidity.

The indirect cost: defrosting evaporators

Humid air doesn’t just cost more to cool, it also drives ice formation on evaporators in chilled and frozen storage. That ice has to be removed through regular defrost cycles, and each cycle carries a real energy cost: typically in the region of 300–400 kW per defrost on a standard evaporator, though this varies by equipment and facility.

Cut the humidity load reaching the evaporator, and you cut how often it needs to defrost, which is where the bigger, compounding savings tend to show up.

In one Airwatergreen case, a Nordic cold storage operator with nine evaporators cut defrost frequency from six times a week down to three, a 50% reduction. The result: an estimated 480,000 kWh in energy savings per year across the nine evaporators, from reduced defrosting alone. Actual savings will vary by site, equipment, and how humidity is currently being managed.

None of this shows up on an energy bill labelled “humidity.” It shows up as higher compressor run time, more defrost cycles, and lower cooling efficiency, all quietly adding up in the background.

Worth a second look

Dehumidification doesn’t get the attention temperature and ventilation do, but for cold storage and food production sites, it can be one of the more overlooked levers for cutting energy cost, both directly, through cheaper cooling, and indirectly, through less time and energy spent defrosting evaporators. If humidity hasn’t been part of your energy review so far, it may be worth adding it to the list.

If you want a review of your current set-up, feel free to reach out to get a meeting or visit by one of our industry experts.

For more information, contact:

Filip Larsen

Business Development Manager

Mobile: (+45) 25 11 99 47

Email: Filip.larsen@airwatergreen.com

www.airwatergreen.com