The Torrington Stop & Shop Supermarket on East Main Street installed a 400-kilowatt fuel cell on Monday, providing 94 percent of the store’s needed electricity.
The fuel cell designed by UTC Power costs $2.3 million, but the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund provided $882,000 to cover some of the cost from its on-site renewable distributed generation program.
The newly construction Torrington store is designed for maximum energy efficiency. In addition to electricity, waste heat is being captured to provide 70 percent of the facilities heating requirements.
The store also utilizes daylight harvesting and dimmable fluorescent lamps for store lighting, LED lighting for frozen food cases, a building energy management system and refrigeration system that reduces refrigerants.
“Fuel cell technology has great potential to reduce the environmental impacts associated with operating a supermarket, as well as to reduce demands on the local electric power infrastructure,” said Kenneth Welter, manager of refrigeration engineering at Stop & Shop, in a statement.
