ENTREPRENEUR
FEBRUARY 14, 2008
WOMEN IN BUSINESS | WORKSPACE

Ice man cometh
Frank Ramirez, CEO of Ice Energy, a Colorado-based firm with offices in Lake Forest, has a bear of a job – literally. His company manufactures the Ice Bear cooling system, which employs a technology that’s so simple, it’s ingenious.

The Ice Bear is equipped with coils placed inside of a water tank. At night, a pump sends cool refrigerant through the coils in the water, and the water freezes into a block around the coils.

During the day, after the air conditioning unit is turned on, the pump propels warm refrigerant back through the coils and through the ice. That refrigerant is chilled, then pumped through pipes into the existing air conditioning system to provide cooling.

At the end of the day, the Ice Bear goes into hibernation, and, later that night, the process begins again.

By using power at night instead of taxing the grid during the day, the Ice Bear lowers greenhouse gases by using clean, cheaper energy overnight.

—John Nolan