Associations
DEBUNKING THE MYTHS OF IOT IN HVAC & R
Presentation by Benjamin Sieweke , services manager of Carel Controls , edited by Eamonn Ryan
Covid was the spur to Internet of Things ( IoT ) in HVAC , as since then things have needed to increasingly be done remotely .
Benjamin Sieweke , services manager of Carel Controls .
Robert Fox , president of the National
Council : SAIRAC , alongside Ben
Sieweke .
When we were all sent home after the Covid outbreak , maintenance technicians lost the visibility to see what had gone wrong with assets . With minimal people on site , what was needed was a method of getting data so as to know what tools and spares to bring on site to remedy the problem with , say , a fridge .
Since then the world has become more technologically advanced and IoT has become a key enabler of getting data remotely into maintenance people ' s hands . For instance , it provides analysis on a certain fridge breaking down , so as to understand what spares are required for that job . A technician can drive to that site with appropriate spares in hand , complete the job and move on . It improves customer relations and business operations by being more economical and professional with better before and after analysis .
All photos by © RACA Journal | Eamonn Ryan
DATA COLLECTION FOR SMALL DEVICES Small devices are for bottle cooler refrigeration systems , built with minimal amounts of technology required to keep CapEx low . In today ' s climate-controlled environment , most modern control solutions are integrated with enough intelligence to support communications via an external BMS ( Building Management System ). However , such advanced systems often don ' t make economic sense to a smaller store as the cost is not viable . The customer simply wants to know when the fridge breaks , when it needs a service , and when temperatures are wrong . It ' s hard to justify a full blown BMS system for that type of installation .
With fridge controllers becoming more and more intelligent and available with simple IoT devices we can now deploy data capture to these bottle coolers at a reasonable cost . The data movement can be routed through the customer ' s Wi Fi via a little black box to the cloud without the need of any SIM card . One way of keeping capex and maintenance costs low in the bottle cooler industry is to avoid use of SIM cards . They can become expensive , not just in the initial outlay but maintaining a SIM card is time consuming and costly . Having the data routed to the customer ’ s network with normal Wi Fi allows this technology to be much cheaper in terms of justifying the cost of this device . The cloud enables access to data received from the fridges , facilitating analysis of cooling performance both live and historic , as well as alarms in the event of anything going wrong . It records constantly and then sends the data in small packets every 15 minutes so as not to use excessive data by streaming .
By being constantly updated this allows one to push for data requests immediately when temperatures fluctuate .
Some important engagement analytics are how each fridge is performing – so if fruit is going off one can be directed to the exact fridge , minimising repairs and maintenance . It also enables contractors to show their customers the temperature variations and justify work done to a fridge . With a simple system such as this for a bottle cooler , it is important that the data be presented in as simple a format as possible – which this does .
14
RACA Journal I May 2023 www . refrigerationandaircon . co . za