Jim Staley (center), COO of NRM, holds the 2007 Energy Project Award from the Association of Energy Engineers – New England Chapter (AEE-NE). Also pictured are Ron Gilooly (left), AEE Vice President, and Emre Schveighoffer (right), NRM President.

 NRM Wins 2007 Energy Project Award from the
Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) – New England Chapter

Boston, MA — February 6, 2008 — Each year, AEE-NE recognizes excellence in regional energy projects. NRM was one of 8 companies honored for their work on behalf of the Peter Condakes Company. Following is the case study NRM submitted to the review panel:

Peter Condakes Company Case Study

In May 2005, NRM completed a comprehensive project including both lighting and refrigeration for the Peter Condakes Company, Door 50 and Door 70. Peter Condakes Company, located in Chelsea, MA, is a produce distributor that has 10 walk-in coolers (refrigeration supplied by 18 dedicated compressors) with a combined volume of 330,000 cubic feet. The facility operates year-round and the refrigeration runs 24/7. Prior to installing RSM, the annual electrical consumption of this site was a staggering 800,000 kWh. To make matters worse, the owners only became aware of problems once there was a catastrophic failure of one or more refrigeration components that resulted in a high temperature in their coolers; at that point, it was an immediate emergency.

In 2004, NRM presented the opportunity to participate in National Grid’s Small Business Program. NRM’s energy audit indicated a significant energy savings opportunity. NRM engineers recommended the installation of its CoolTrol® system to control temperature, defrost and evaporator fans in their coolers. NRM also recommended these controllers be connected through its Remote Site Manager (RSM) system to allow them to monitor and control their refrigeration over the Internet and receive energy and temperature alarms via cell phone and email. Finally, lighting measures were also installed. The existing lighting in the refrigerated spaces was a combination of 300-watt quartz halogen and 2-L 8’ HO fluorescent. It was replaced with 4-L F32T8 reflectorized vapor tight fixtures so as to assure keeping the lamps warm enough to start and maintain light level in the cold rooms. The area lighting consisted of 400-watt low bay metal halide fixtures, which were replaced with 6-L F32T8 reflectorized high intensity fluorescent fixtures each with an occupancy sensor attached. National Grid treated the former lighting project as a custom measure and the latter lighting project as a prescriptive measure. The CoolTrol® portion of the project qualified for an 80% utility incentive. Based on estimated savings of 125,000 kWh, Condakes would realize a payback in just 6 months.

After the installation, immediate energy savings were observed via RSM. Prior to installation, evaporator fan runtime was 100% and the new system reduced it by over 50%. Because of RSM’s real time monitoring capability of space and coil temperatures along with compressor amperages, NRM was able to quickly identify several existing refrigeration problems that resulted in significantly greater energy savings than anticipated. One of the identified issues included a defective contactor that was stuck on, causing the compressor to run even when not calling for cooling. We estimate that by identifying and then fixing this problem, RSM saved Condakes and additional 30,000 KwH per year. (See screen capture below that clearly shows the problem and the operating profile after repair). Additional problems identified by RSM that have yielded savings are low refrigerant levels that yielded additional savings of 400 KwH per day through early detection and compressor short cycling (See pictures below).

The innovation and challenge to NRM for customers like Condakes was to create a simple approach to real-time monitoring and control. Each site is equipped with a ‘gateway’ that collects information from each of the controllers and monitoring points and then ONLY sends CHANGED information using the customers existing network and Internet connection to the RSM servers. Each customer can access their information through a standard web browser and based on their login authorization level, they can then manage their equipment and improve its operation through further tuning. As they make changes to temperatures, defrost and schedule settings, etc., the changes are sent over the Internet, back to the site’s gateway and to each of the controllers. Since each controller is a stand-alone unit, the customer’s site is in no way jeopardized if their Internet provider has temporary problems. Should the connection to the Internet fail, the customer receives an alarm message on their mobile device and the gateway journals local data with time stamps and sends the messages to the server when the connection returns. Because the gateway only reports ‘on-change’, very little bandwidth is required.

The greatest challenge faced by NRM was in creating an intelligent, user friendly, easy to use system that could also provide supermarket level refrigeration technology to Small Business owners at an affordable price; if the user can book a flight over the Internet, he can become proficient at managing his site using RSM. Finally, because the user interface software is hosted on the NRM servers, the customer can access their refrigeration, HVAC and lighting controllers from anywhere in the world.

After analyzing the electrical consumption one year prior to one year after, the Peter Condakes Company realized savings of 270,000 kWh (equal to a 34% drop in their normal annual usage) or 116% more than originally estimated by NRM… all achieved through Continuous Performance Monitoring (CPM) using RSM technology.

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