Food & Beverage / Cold Chain
kWh per case, refrigeration that never sheds, and a peak nobody owns
Food and beverage plants normalise everything to production and get an energy bill denominated in kilowatt-hours. OptimizeOS closes that gap where it can be closed honestly — and says plainly where it cannot.
Beyond kilowatt-hours: refrigeration compressors are watched for vibration and electrical signature so failures become scheduled repairs — with power-quality monitoring protecting the equipment that protects your product.
The problem
Refrigeration and compressed air run continuously, stage up in the afternoon, and never shed for the interval that sets the demand charge. Product changeovers move the energy per case by a margin nobody can quantify, so the plant cannot tell a good week from a warm one. A sanitation shift runs a load that nobody has looked at in three years. And the corporate energy target is set in kWh while the plant is measured in cases, so the two conversations never meet.
The value math for this plant
Meter the two loads that move the number
Refrigeration and compressed air are usually the two largest continuous loads, and they are the two most likely to be staging without ever shedding. Metering the line total, the top three consumers, and the compressed-air and chilled-water headers catches nearly all the variance — metering every machine catches the last fifteen percent at roughly five times the install cost.
On kWh per case, here is the honest boundary
Line kWh plus a production counter on the same clock gives a real, defensible number at the line level and per shift. Attributing it to a specific SKU or order requires order context from the MES or ERP, and that is the leg almost no deployment closes. OptimizeOS will build to the line-and-shift number on day one and will not promise the SKU number without a scoped integration and the customer's IT owning it. A kWh-per-case figure derived from an operator-entered daily production count will disagree with the plant controller's number and kill adoption in a month, so it is not offered.
The power-factor clause is worth checking first
It is an existing line on an existing bill, it is a low-resolution measurement, and it needs one three-phase meter at the service rather than a deployment.
What OptimizeOS does for food & beverage / cold chain
Platform capabilities mapped to the outcomes this market actually gets paid for.
Refrigeration energy monitoring
Circuit-level kW on racks, condensers and evaporators so you can see which system is drifting and what it costs per day.
Compressor condition & vibration
Wireless vibration on refrigeration and air compressors gives weeks of early warning before a failure threatens product.
Temperature-correlated anomalies
Compare power against ambient and setpoint conditions to separate a hot day from a genuine efficiency problem.
Power quality on refrigeration circuits
Track voltage, current and power factor on hard-starting compressor loads to prevent nuisance trips and motor damage.
Line & tenant cost attribution
Line kWh plus a production counter on the same clock gives a defensible energy-per-case number at line and shift level. A per-SKU number needs MES or ERP order context and a scoped integration; it is not promised without one.
Alerts & documented records
Get notified on runaway runtime and export the trend history auditors and customers ask for.
A day in the life: the freezer rack that quietly aged
A representative scenario of the platform catching a real issue in this facility type.
- Week 1
Rack 2 compressor kW creeps 6% above its own baseline at identical ambient temperature.
- Week 2
Vibration on the lead compressor trends upward; box temperature is still perfect.
- Week 2
OptimizeOS raises a condition alert with the correlated power and vibration trend.
- Week 3
Service finds a failing bearing and low charge — repaired on a planned Sunday.
- After
kW returns to baseline. No spoilage, no emergency call-out, no lost load.
Market and programme data, not customer results. Sources are named on each figure.
Who installs it
Installed by a certified partner's licensed electrician on scheduled panel access — GSA documented roughly eight hours for 144 wireless CTs across 13 panels. Billing-grade and service-entrance meters need a real outage window, which is named and priced in the quote rather than discovered later.