₱75,000 a month back in your pocket.From day one.
For Philippine mall food courts, canteens and restaurant chains. The dish line heats water at COP 1 with electric heaters — the same Karnot platform that runs your walk-in chillers and freezers can make every drop of that hot water from the heat they already throw away — one electricity bill, no flame on site, financed by the bank, paid for out of the saving. The heat your cold rooms dump today is the heat your sinks buy back all day.
The dish line heats water at COP 1. The cold rooms throw their heat away.
A food court runs two opposing thermal jobs at the same time, every trading hour: the dishwashing line needs a 60 °C wash and an 82 °C sanitising rinse all day, while every tenant's walk-in chiller, freezer and ice machine dumps its condenser heat into the back-of-house. Today those two jobs run on the same meter, twice over — Meralco to heat the water at COP 1, Meralco again to throw the same heat into the corridor.
The electric water heater is your biggest controllable cost — and it runs at COP 1
Commercial dishwashing needs a 60 °C wash and an 82 °C sanitising rinse, pot wash and hand-wash hot water — every trading hour. Philippine food courts heat it with electric instant and storage heaters at COP 1.0 — one kilowatt-hour of Meralco power for one kilowatt-hour of heat, roughly 87,000 kWh/yr (~₱1.22M) on a 25-stall court. It is the most expensive heat there is. Karnot delivers the same hot water at COP 4.0+ — a quarter of the electricity — and the heat it moves is the heat your cold rooms are already rejecting. No flame, no LPG, no combustion anywhere.
Your walk-in cold rooms are a free boiler — pointed at the ceiling
Tenant walk-in chillers (2–4 °C), freezers (−18 °C), beverage cold rooms and ice machines run all day on ageing R404A at COP ~2.8 with an F-gas phasedown clock on the asset register, dumping condenser heat into the back-of-house. But that rejected heat, captured at the iCOOL CO₂ gas cooler at 75–90 °C, makes the dishwashing hot water for free — while the cold rooms run at COP 4.2, 40% less electricity, at the same time. One heat pump heats every sink, at a quarter of the bill.
Chill the cold rooms. Capture the heat. Retire the electric heater.
A heat pump moves heat rather than creating it. When iCOOL runs your walk-in chillers and freezers, the heat removed is delivered to the hot side at 75–90 °C — exactly what the dishwasher wash tank and the 82 °C sanitising rinse need. Your dishwashers, sinks and walk-in boxes stay — we replace the utilities around the kitchen, not the kitchen.
iCOOL CO₂
Walk-in chillers, freezers and ice machines at COP 4.2. The gas cooler delivers 75–90 °C hot water from the same compression cycle. A1 safety class — the right refrigerant for a commercial kitchen.
iHEAT R290
Dishwasher wash and sanitising-rinse duty. Drop-in replacement for the COP 1.0 electric water heater. Outdoor install, sealed 1.4 kg charge, EN 378 compliant — no resistance bank, no flame on site.
iSTOR PCM
Thermal battery on both sides. Hot: recovered heat banked for the lunch-rush rinse. Cold: the walk-in freezers ride through a PH brownout with zero compressor load. The food stays cold and the dishes keep moving.
iSAVE + iVOLT
iSAVE meters every duty — monthly IPMVP Option B report to your accountant and your lender. iVOLT zero-export solar on the mall roof cuts the remaining grid draw a further 30–50%.
Mid-size mall food court. A real number per cover.
Modelled on a mid-size Philippine mall food court — ~25 stalls with central dishwashing, ~5,000 L/day of hot water, walk-in cold rooms and ice machines. Scale by stalls and covers — a 12-stall canteen halves it, a 50-stall regional centre doubles it. The per-cover economics hold.
| Annual figure · ~25-stall food court | Today · electric heaters + old fridges | Karnot platform | You stop paying |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dishwashing hot water (wash + rinse) | COP 1.0 electric · ~87,000 kWh/yr | COP 4.0 · recovered fridge heat | ₱915K/yr |
| Walk-in refrigeration | COP 2.8 · R404A | COP 4.2 · CO₂ GWP 1 | ₱255K/yr |
| Total energy bill (heat + cooling) | ~₱1.72M/yr | ~₱0.55M/yr | −68% / ~₱1.17M |
| Scope 2 + refrigerant exposure | grid load + R404A GWP 3,922 | COP 4 + GWP 1 & 3 | ~40 tCO₂e/yr |
| Total investment (VAT-inc) | (already paid) | ~₱1.5M | 1.3 yr cash payback |
The cash flow. Plain and dull.
CAPEX of ~₱1.5M, financed under a green loan at ~7.5% p.a. over 7 years. The monthly saving (~₱98K) covers the monthly loan payment (~₱23K) more than four times over. Net cash in pocket from day one.
We don't guess the saving. We calculate your thermodynamic minimum.
Pinch analysis maps every hot stream in your food court (the condenser heat your cold rooms must reject) against every cold stream (the dishwashing and sanitising-rinse water that must heat) and computes the three numbers that define your energy performance. A food court is the textbook case — the analysis practically writes itself.
The absolute least bought-in heat your food court needs after maximum heat recovery. If your electric heaters draw more than this — and in every kitchen we have surveyed, they do — the difference is pure waste.
The absolute least chiller energy required after recovery. Everything your cold rooms reject above this is heat you paid to remove and then paid again to throw away.
The food-court bottleneck temperature, between the cold-room reject heat and the dishwater demand. Above it: heat deficit. Below it: heat surplus. A heat pump is the only utility that moves surplus heat from below the pinch to the deficit above it — which is why the saving is 68%, not 15%.
New to pinch analysis? We wrote the plain-English guide — no jargon, no PhD required, with worked composite curves explained in pictures. Then commission a Level 1 Energy Survey (₱90K, refunded in full on install) and we run the pinch study on your actual dish-line and refrigeration logs.
You pay nothing up front. The bank does.
Three Philippine banks run green-loan programmes built for exactly this kind of project. The monthly saving covers the loan payment more than four times over. Net cash flow goes up from day one.
These are loans, not grants. Plus BOI Pioneer Income Tax Holiday under RA 11285 — energy-efficient commercial systems qualify. Karnot files the loan, the BOI registration, the building permits and the monthly IPMVP M&V report your lender wants to see as part of project scope. You sign at the bank window, not before.
Download the Food Courts & Dishwashing Application Brief
A 4-page application brief and a 10-slide deck — both ready to share with your operations manager, your accountant or your board.
4-Page Application Brief
A4 portrait PDF · print-ready. Hero, cash strip, problem + architecture, four products, the food-court numbers table, pinch analysis, bank finance, founder quote.
10-Slide Sales Deck
16:9 landscape PDF. The complete presentation — problem, architecture, four boxes, the bill, cash flow, bank finance, pinch analysis, refrigerant trilemma, next steps.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much can a Philippine mall food court save?
A modelled mid-size Philippine mall food court (~25 stalls with central dishwashing, ~5,000 L/day of hot water) saves approximately ₱1.17M per year — a 68% reduction in the combined heating and cooling energy bill. Today's setup (COP 1.0 electric instant/storage water heaters for the dishwashing line, ~87,000 kWh/yr, plus ageing walk-in refrigeration) costs about ₱1.72M/yr; the Karnot integrated platform delivers the same duties for about ₱0.55M/yr of electricity. With a 7-year green loan at ~7.5% p.a., the monthly saving (~₱98K) exceeds the loan payment (~₱23K), leaving roughly ₱75,000 net cash per month from day one. Canteens, restaurant chains and larger regional centres scale proportionally with stalls and covers.
How can the same machine chill the cold rooms and heat the dishwashing water?
A heat pump moves heat rather than creating it. When Karnot iCOOL CO₂ runs your walk-in chillers, freezers and ice machines, the heat removed is rejected at the CO₂ gas cooler at 75–90 °C — exactly the temperature the dishwashing line needs for the 60 °C wash and the 82 °C sanitising rinse. Today that condenser heat is dumped into the back-of-house while COP 1.0 electric heaters buy the same energy back from Meralco. The Karnot platform transfers it across instead: chill the cold rooms, capture the heat, retire the electric water heater. Your dishwashers, sinks and walk-in boxes stay — we replace the utilities around the kitchen, not the kitchen itself. There is no LPG and no flame anywhere in the design.
Can a heat pump reach the 82 °C sanitising rinse temperature?
Yes. The iCOOL CO₂ gas cooler delivers 75–90 °C hot water and the iHEAT R290 cascade delivers 60–85 °C at COP 4.0+ in Philippine ambient — covering the 60 °C dishwasher wash tank, pot-wash and hand-wash hot water, and the 82 °C final sanitising rinse a commercial dish line requires. Because the heat is recovered from the refrigeration the food court is already running, the dishwashing hot water effectively comes for free while the cold rooms run 40% more efficiently. The COP 1.0 electric resistance heaters retire; there is no flame and no flue on site.
We don't use LPG — our heaters are electric. Does this still pay?
This is exactly the case it pays best. Philippine food courts almost never use LPG for dishwashing — they use electric instant and storage heaters running at COP 1.0, meaning one kilowatt-hour of Meralco power buys one kilowatt-hour of heat, the most expensive heat there is. A Karnot heat pump delivers the same hot water at COP 4.0+, roughly a quarter of the electricity, and recovers that heat from the cold rooms you are already paying to run. There is no boiler to retire and no combustion involved — the villain here is the COP 1.0 electric heater, and replacing it with a COP 4.0 heat pump is where the 68% saving comes from.
What is pinch analysis and why does it matter for my food court?
Pinch analysis maps every hot stream (the condenser heat your walk-in chillers and freezers must reject) against every cold stream (the dishwashing and sanitising-rinse water that must heat) and computes QHmin and QCmin — the absolute minimum heating and cooling your operation needs after maximum heat recovery. Everything above that minimum is waste. In a food court the pinch point sits around 30 °C — between the cold-room reject heat and the dishwater demand — and a heat pump is the only utility that can move surplus heat from below the pinch to the deficit above it — which is why savings reach 68% rather than the 10–15% a heat-exchanger-only retrofit delivers. Start with the plain-English pinch guide, then commission a Level 1 Energy Survey (₱90K, refunded on install) and we run the pinch study on your actual dish-line and refrigeration logs.
Is CO₂ refrigerant safe for a commercial kitchen?
Yes — CO₂ (R744) is an A1 safety class refrigerant: non-toxic, non-flammable, food-safe, the right refrigerant for a kitchen behind a public dining hall. GWP of 1 with no F-gas phasedown exposure. Compare the legacy options: R404A and R134a walk-in racks have GWP up to 3,922 with quota-driven service prices rising every year, and industrial ammonia is efficient but toxic — exclusion zones, specialist technicians, insurance loadings unsuited to a food court. Karnot iHEAT R290 (propane) sits outdoors with a sealed 1.4 kg charge under EN 378. Nothing on the asset register carries a phasedown date or an exclusion zone.
What happens to my walk-in freezers during a brownout?
The iSTOR PCM thermal battery carries the walk-in chillers and freezers through 8–12 hours of grid outage on stored cooling alone — no compressor, no generator — so tenant stock stays cold and within food-safety temperature. The same battery banks recovered refrigeration heat so the dishwashing hot water is ready for the lunch-rush rinse load: the heat pump charges the hot buffer, the dish line draws on demand. The food stays cold and the dishes keep moving through the outage.
What financing and incentives are available?
Three Philippine banks run green-loan programmes that fit food-court and canteen CAPEX: DBP SEFP (~6.5–8% p.a., 70–80% LTV, commercial energy-efficiency priority), LandBank SEILP (~7% p.a., strong for malls and canteen operators), and BPI SDF (~1–1.5% below standard SME rates). Most installs also qualify for BOI Pioneer status and an Income Tax Holiday under RA 11285 as energy-efficient commercial systems. Karnot files the loan application, the BOI registration, the building permits and the monthly IPMVP M&V report your lender wants — as part of project scope.
Want the numbers for your food court?
Send us your stall count, daily covers, 12 months of electricity bills and your dish-line + refrigeration schedule. We come back with a sized system, your QHmin and QCmin, projected saving, payback — and the bank application ready to sign.