Are your refrigeration plants costing you millions?

THE CHALLENGE

Refrigeration is typically 30% of energy costs

And, it can sometimes feel that Fridge power consumption can be an uncontrolled cost centre too.  Power consumption can vary significantly with weather conditions, production changes, operator and maintenance input (or lack of same!).

The following are some of the issues which we typically see which are causing excessive energy consumption in brewery refrigeration plants:

• Using simple energy KPI’s (kWh’s per hL) that do not highlight either energy losses OR savings opportunities during dynamic conditions i.e. weather changes, production increases/decreases or product mix changes 
• No real understanding of how production changes (product mix changes for example) can drive energy consumption changes
• Insufficient automation in place or;
• Automation switched off (maybe initially only temporarily) and plants running in manual
• Plants do not dynamically adapt to changing weather and to production conditions
• Plant equipment consuming more power and water than design due to lack of maintenance or incorrect installation

THE SOLUTION

Build digital models and feed them live data

Modelling of individual refrigeration system components so now you have an accurate prediction of the overall refrigeration plant performance you will start to see deviations between the actual and predicted (over time) as the plant conditions start to change i.e.

• Condensers foul
• Air ingress occurs on the low temperature side 
• Compressors degrade 
• Oil carries over to evaporators
• Automation switched off and compressor sequencing not as it should be 

The solution lets you: