When it comes to energy usage the refrigeration cases and plant in most supermarkets and food retail outlets will account for as much as 70% of the electrical energy being used.   In 2006 the Carbon Trust reported “Reducing your energy bill by just 20% could add the same amount to your profit as a 5% increase in sales”, Tektroniks took this to heart and continue to work hard in the development of systems that save energy. Many monitoring businesses now offer to help optimise the use of energy but Tektroniks integrated controls take this one stage further.

Tektroniks have developed refrigerated case controllers that control the use of refrigerants in a different way, John Dyer their Business Development Manager explains “At Tektroniks we have always advocated moving away from the Thermostatic Expansion Valve (TEV) technology wherever possible and using Electronic Expansion Valves (EEV) instead. Our case controller manages the EEV within the case in a revolutionary way to more closely maintain the required optimum temperature.  By having better control over the EEV and more closely maintaining the optimum temperature we can seriously reduce the amount of work that the refrigerant plant needs to do.  Within the refrigeration plant it’s the compressors that use the majority of the energy, by reducing their work load we achieve a natural reduction in the amount of electrical energy used.  In independent laboratory tests, using our case controller showed a 13% reduction in the energy used by a refrigerated system when compared to that of a standard controller and TEV technology”.

Tektroniks have not just stopped at the case controller; they have also developed technologies that can be used with refrigerated plant to gain even further energy savings, John Dyer commented” as we have already discussed the single biggest energy saving method is to reduce the work that the energy eating refrigerant compressors need to do.  To reduce the plant workload we have developed a system that tracks the ambient air temperature and works in conjunction with our case controller.   When the ambient air temperature is lower at night and during winter months, our Ambient Tracking Control (ATC) system reduces the condenser head pressure and optimises the performance to reduce the workload of the refrigerant plant.  Again independent laboratory tests have shown that using our ATC system and our case controllers together can give an energy saving of up to 32% when compared to a standard refrigeration plant set up. A further fringe benefit is that by reducing the plant workload we can also reduce the wear on compressor and fan systems, this can prolong the working life of the equipment and reduce maintenance costs.

But what about the costs, on this John Dyer commented “to retro install a current store would probably be cost prohibitive, however with new builds or refurbishments the cost of moving over to EEV technologies is fairly negligible when incorporated into the case manufactures build.  The cost of our case controllers and ATC system will be greater than that of a standard set up but our technologies benefit from Enhanced Capital Allowance approval.  In terms of energy saving no on-site refrigerated plant will operate the same as when in laboratory conditions and we would not expect to always see the full 32% energy reduction, however a reduction in energy usage of between 15-20% compared to a standard refrigerated plant set up is totally realistic. With the benefits of a fully integrated control system with Tektroniks wireless monitoring capabilities our system is hard to beat”.