Refrigeration Upgrades For
Higher Education
School Kitchens
Few things are more important to your higher education school kitchen operations than the refrigeration in your walk-in cooler or freezer. Students and faculty rely on these systems to keep food safe and fresh. Refrigeration upgrades for your higher ed. school kitchen will ensure your most critical system is always running optimally, reduce your commercial electric bill, and avoid surprise catastrophes.
NRM's mission for over 30 years has been to help institutions that rely on refrigeration improve the operation of the system in noticeable, meaningful ways. Your equipment running efficiently and free of operational issues isn't an option for your business, it's a necessity.
Everyone from managers to hourly workers to delivery drivers will love the refrigeration upgrades
Smart controls, on-demand defrost, and a safe, timed shutdown are a few of the refrigeration upgrades you'll receive. These help ensure your staff interact with your cooling system both more effectively and more safely.
Automated Temperature
Logging & Tracking
Eliminate the risk of human error in your temperature recordkeeping by having it logged automatically 24/7. Our system never needs to take a sick day.
On-Demand
Instant Defrost
Notice ice building up on your evaporator coils? Don’t wait for your ref. tech on a service call, start a defrost from your phone or on the controller.
Timed System
Shutdown Button
Safely turn off the evaporator fans for a short period of time while employees or delivery drivers are performing their duties in the walk-in cooler.
High/Low Temp. + Many More Alerts
Arm yourself with a wealth of operational alarms to stay ahead of expensive emergencies and at-risk product. Unique alerts like short cycling or amp. spikes.
Controls Bypass for Troubleshooting
A unique and beloved feature is the controls bypass. This treats our controls as if they aren't there so your tech. can troubleshoot issues in the system.
May Qualify for Utility-Funded Incentives
NRM’s energy efficiency upgrades are verifiable and proven over the last 25 years. As a result, they often qualify for generous utility-funded incentives.
High/Low Temp. + Many More Alerts
Arm yourself with a wealth of operational alarms to stay ahead of expensive emergencies and at-risk product. Unique alerts like short cycling or amp. spikes.
Controls Bypass for Troubleshooting
A unique and beloved feature is the controls bypass. This treats our controls as if they aren't there so your tech. can troubleshoot issues in the system.
May Qualify for Utility-Funded Incentives
NRM’s energy efficiency upgrades are verifiable and proven over the last 25 years. As a result, they often qualify for generous utility-funded incentives.
Automated Temperature
Logging & Tracking
Eliminate the risk of human error in your temperature recordkeeping by having it logged automatically 24/7. Our system never needs to take a sick day.
On-Demand
Instant Defrost
Notice ice building up on your evaporator coils? Don’t wait for your ref. tech on a service call, start a defrost from your phone or on the controller.
Timed System
Shutdown Button
Safely turn off the evaporator fans for a short period of time while employees or delivery drivers are performing their duties in the walk-in cooler.
“The installation was very easy. The NRM installers were on time, and the work was fast and efficient. They even trained us on how to use the new controls on the freezer, and when I called in with a question, NRM helped me quickly. As far as the product features, the safe shutoff is great for us because when we get a delivery, we have to sort it, load it, and organize it in the freezer. Not having the fans going makes it easier for us.”
— Gerald, Manager, New Hope Outreach Services
Avoid food safety crises with a wealth of operational data and proactive insights
Whether you have 1 cold space in a single school kitchen, or 100 cold spaces spread across an entire district, our live summary page gives you an immediate overview of all your cooling activity.
Quickly consult current and 7-day runtimes, cooling status, temperature settings, and address any alarms that have been triggered.
Consider the amount of time and effort you’d save by having critical operational info all conveniently in one place.
Arm yourself with powerful and unique visual diagnostics graphs to pinpoint exactly when and where an operating issue arises. Troubleshooting becomes more efficient and effective, helping to ensure the issue is resolved on the first technician visit.
The graphs show important but often overlooked components such as amperages, compressor cycles, the solenoid valve, and things like whether a door is open or not.
The monitoring platform offers transparent runtime and temperature data that provide the measurement and verification proof for accurate recordkeeping.
These graphs also allow you to actually see how much less energy your refrigeration system is using. While also tracking that safe temperatures are always met.
Store up to 10 years of operational logs that take the human-error component out of tracking temperatures.
Going beyond a high temperature alert — which occurs only after an issue has already disrupted operations — NRM’s platform provides a suite of early detection notifications to help you be more proactive with troubleshooting.
For example, a compressor that’s short cycling will still likely be able to cool the space, but it’s dangerous, unnoticed overuse could lead to a critical system failure, jeopardizing the entire cooler’s worth of food.
Start Here: Fill out this short form and we'll be in touch within 24 hours!
The process to get these refrigeration upgrades couldn’t be easier. It starts with a quick discussion of your basic store info such as current refrigeration layout, monthly energy costs, and what you’re looking to achieve.
From there, we’ll decide together the next best step to take. Usually, it’s a full, no-obligation refrigeration assessment to identify your actual opportunities. Then, we check if your utility provider offers any incentives for energy-efficiency projects in your area.
Achieve provable, long-term energy savings
The combination of smart controls that optimize operation to run based on cooling need, hardware component upgrades, and preventative maintenance measures lead to proven results.
"NRM’s state-of-the-art system provides not only efficiencies for the company, it’s also showing us exactly what’s going on under this roof. The facility is broken up into zones so everything at this company is monitored 24/7, 365 days a year. If we do experience an issue, we have access to a 24-hour tech. support line to help us determine what the problems are. I get a notification, and so do the owners and our refrigeration technician so we can take care of the problem spot on."
— George, Facilities Manager, Colony Foods
We've helped hundreds of schools and universities just like yours
The Country Mile
Tigers Express
TJ's Neighborhood Market
Upgrades for your refrigeration system may be eligible for generous incentives from your utility provider that cover 50-100% of the up-front project cost.
You must act now, though, because utilities award the incentive dollars on a first-come, first-served basis!
We hear these questions most frequently
How can NRM's solution save so much energy?
Did you know commercial refrigeration systems are sized for the hottest days of the year? But the “hottest days” only happen about 20 times per year, which means all systems are oversized for the other 340~ days. The CoolTrol® smart controls take advantage of that fact to adapt your system’s cooling based on need. It also manages defrost more closely to what is required, and monitors temperatures. Along with those controls, NRM implements multiple other efficiency enhancements.
My refrigeration tech says it's not safe to turn off my evaporator fans. Is that true?
In an unsafe manner, yes. But with NRM’s solution, it is perfectly safe. Implemented in over 50,000 systems to-date, the smart controls keep fans running when refrigeration is ON and only cycles them OFF whenever refrigeration is OFF. Every running fan motor generates heat into the cold space, which requires the system to keep calling for cooling. Why keep what are essentially heaters running once temperature set point is reached?
What kind of guarantee can you provide me that these savings are real?
NRM has earned the utility’s trust and confidence, which is the greatest guarantee we can offer. In some programs, NRM has been providing solutions since 1997 with the local utility company’s backing. We would not continue to win these contracts year over year if we didn’t produce deliver the projected savings. But also, the smart controls track equipment runtimes and operational histories. You’ll see in plain numbers how much less your system runs.
Why is the utility company paying me money to use LESS energy?
Many towns, cities, and states are adopting laws and regulations to get both citizens and companies to use less energy. Considering it is more economical and practical to encourage consumers to use less energy than to build a new power plant, more areas will start to undertake similar programs.
In these programs, utilities collect a fee on your electric bill based on usage. It may be a line item shown as “public benefit charge” or “energy conservation charge”. This money accumulates and is used to fund the incentives that pay for energy-efficiency optimizations.
While the funds are only available for qualifying projects, it is there for businesses to take advantage of.
So, it’s a smart investment to participate in the programs and get incentives to upgrade your refrigeration. You’re already paying in to it, you might as well use it.
How much incentive do I qualify for?
The incentive depends on how much energy a project can save.
Think of it as the utility buying capacity from you to prevent overtaxing the energy grid. The power you save now becomes available to new customers later. To find out what you might qualify for, we recommend a no-cost assessment of your current refrigeration system. This enables us to calculate savings that we then present to your utility company, who then allots the amount they will pay for your capacity.
If your systems already are considered partially or totally energy efficient, there may be little or no opportunity for reducing energy or qualifying for an incentive.
What level of technical proficiency is required to use CoolTrol®?
CoolTrol® functions specifically for you: the end user. The smart controls are equipped with software developed by NRM and designed to intelligently operate equipment at optimum energy efficiency. It has many user-friendly features, and a superior user interface compared to traditional refrigeration thermostats that are primarily designed for technicians, not end users.