Find us at BrauBeviale, Hall 10, stand 514
Andy Joynson is speaking on the Main Stage in Hall 9 at 14:00 on Tuesday 10 November, on electrifying heat in beverage production.
Andy spent thirty years in food and beverage before joining Caldera, the last four as Operations Director at innocent drinks, where he took the Rotterdam factory all-electric. His talk draws on that experience.
The rest of the team will be on stand 514 in Hall 10 for all three days of the show, 10 to 12 November. If you've already installed a heat pump and your gas boiler is still running, we'd especially like to talk to you.
Why beverage steam is peaky
Very few beverage sites draw steam at a steady rate. The wort boil creates a large, predictable peak on every brew, cleaning cycles run to a schedule, and pasteurising and sterilising come up with the line at the start of each shift, often with several lines starting together.
A gas boiler handles this by firing harder. Fuel arrives through a pipe, and the cost of a peak is mostly the fuel burned during it. Electricity works differently.
What a heat pump does well, and where it stops
A heat pump is at its most efficient when it runs steadily, lifting low-grade or waste heat by a modest amount. Most beverage sites have a genuine baseload, and a heat pump is the right way to carry it.
Two things limit how far it goes. It responds more slowly to fast load swings than a batch process needs, and it can only turn down so far before it stops modulating.
So most sites keep a gas boiler alongside it to cover the peaks, start-ups and recovery. That boiler now fires in short bursts instead of running steadily, and the short cycling, cold starts and hot standby that follow can claw back a meaningful part of the saving the heat pump was meant to deliver.
Swapping that boiler for an electric one moves the problem rather than solving it
Replacing the remaining gas boiler with a direct electric boiler is the obvious next step, and on equipment cost alone, electric boilers and Storage Boilers are comparable.
The cost is in everything around it. A direct electric boiler draws its full rated power the moment the process asks for steam, so the grid connection, transformers, switchgear and distribution behind it have to be sized for the biggest steam demand the site ever has, not the average. On many sites that means a connection upgrade, which is often the largest single item in the project and can take years to deliver.
It also turns your steam peaks into electrical peaks. Under most commercial tariffs, part of what you pay follows your highest import, so every brew, cleaning cycle and shift start becomes a spike on your bill.
What storage changes
A Caldera Storage Boiler is an electric boiler with thermal storage and controls built in. Because charging and discharging are decoupled, the electrical side and the steam side no longer have to move in step.
- Import sized to average, not peak. The Heat Cells charge steadily and the stored heat covers the peaks, so your connection and transformers are sized for average demand.
- Charging within your spare capacity. The controls only charge within the headroom your connection already has, so many sites can start with the connection they've got.
- A peak you choose. Your highest import becomes a figure you set, rather than one the brewhouse imposes.
- Peaks covered without oversizing. The store handles short bursts of very high steam demand, with a discharge response of under 60 seconds.
- Conventional steam. Saturated steam at up to 16 barg (204°C), over 95% dry, delivered directly into your existing steam plant.
It works with the heat pump, not instead of it
None of this is an argument against heat pumps. Where a site has a real source of low-grade or waste heat, a heat pump is the most efficient way to carry the steady load.
The Storage Boiler covers what the heat pump can't: the peaks, the fast swings, and steam at temperatures above what a heat pump can reach. Together they can electrify a site's steam without either of them, or the grid connection, having to be sized for the worst hour of the day.
It runs alongside your existing boilers, so you can turn a gas boiler down rather than switch it off. Each Heat Cell stores 5 MWh with 2 MWe of charging, and systems scale from 5 MWh to beyond 100 MWh, so you can phase it in and add capacity as the case builds.
Test it against your own load shape
Whether this works on your site depends on your load shape and your tariff, so we'll model it on your numbers. Send us twelve months of half-hourly demand data and we'll simulate a Storage Boiler across all 8,760 hours of a year against real price signals, then take you through the results.
Or come and find us on stand 514 in Hall 10. Email sales@caldera.co.uk to book a time with Andy or the team.
About this analysis
The product specifications quoted here are Caldera's published figures: saturated steam at up to 16 barg (204°C), over 95% dry, a discharge response of under 60 seconds, and Heat Cell modules of 5 MWh storage and 2 MWe charging, scaling from 5 MWh to beyond 100 MWh.
The description of heat pump behaviour (most efficient running steadily on a modest temperature lift, slower to follow fast load swings, limited turndown, and the short-cycling losses when a gas boiler is kept for peaks) is Caldera's own engineering assessment rather than a figure from a published study, and we don't claim a quantified saving from it.
Caldera's industrial-scale demonstrator at Fareham has met its targets every year since 2024.
