NRM Success Story
Richmond Wholesale Meats
Richmond, CA
Richmond Wholesale Meat Co. operates a commercial meat processing and storage facility at 2920 Regatta Blvd in Richmond, CA, served by two PG&E meters. Prior to any upgrades, the facility was spending roughly $14,800 per month on electricity — about $178,000 annually — consuming nearly 1.2 million kWh per year.
Phase 1: Lighting & Refrigeration Controls
In July 2022, Richmond Wholesale signed a PG&E On-Bill Financing (OBF) agree ment for $125,900 to fund the first phase of energy upgrades through National Resource Management (NRM). The project covered LED lighting upgrades and refrigeration controls, and the installation was completed in November 2022. The loan was structured at zero interest over 27 months at $4,663/month — essentially bill-neutral given the expected savings. The results over the following 12 months were strong. The facility reduced consumption by 295,739 kWh — a 25% reduction — saving approximately $70,977 annually at $0.24/kWh. This exceeded the OBF-estimated savings of 241,507 kWh by over 22%, demonstrating that the measures performed above expectations.
Phase 2: VMF Smart Compressor Controls
Building on that success, in November 2023 NRM installed VMF (Variable Mass Flow) Smart Compressor Controls on four Bitzer freezer compressors at a project cost of $94,911. The system works by optimizing compressor speed to match the actual load at the evaporator, rather than running at full capacity continuously — reducing energy consumption by an estimated 25–50%. Early data from the first four months (December 2023 – March 2024) shows the facility averaging 64,500 kWh/month compared to 74,800 kWh/month during the same period the prior year — tracking toward an additional 124,000+ kWh in annual savings.
Project Summary
Combined, the two-phase project represents a $220,811 total investment projected to deliver over $100,000 in annual utility savings at $0.24/kWh — a simple payback of approximately 2.2 years. When accounting for Phase 1 alone on a confirmed basis, the project has already validated 295,739 kWh in annual savings, exceeding every pre-project estimate. NRM’s approach of layering refrigeration controls, lighting upgrades, and compressor optimization has produced a comprehensive energy efficiency solution tailored to the demands of a commercial refrigeration-intensive operation.
Industry
Meat Distribution & Wholesale
Location
Richmond, CA
Implemented Measures
- CoolTrol refrigeration controls
- Remote Site Manager
- Lighting Upgrades
- VMF Compressor Controls
- Actionable Alerts
Annual Energy Savings
420,000 kWh
Annual Dollar Savings
$100,800
"I think we're saving somewhere in the ballpark of like 40% on our electric costs. Our refrigeration and fans are not running at 100% like they used to. It’s not much to look at in the facility, but it sure shows up on the bill. NRM's solution also helps with preventative maintenance and eliminating some of the larger issues that you can sometimes just sweep under the rug. With the alarms, it's like, 'OK, I really need to deal with this because I can see it.'"
— Rich Doellstedt
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.
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.