Monitoring Commercial Refrigeration Equipment

Problem

A staple of Rhode Island since 1914, Wright’s Dairy Farm is known for providing fresh dairy and bakery products. Worried about aging refrigeration units and the potential need to repair or replace them, the management team at Wright’s was looking for an easy way to track temperatures in their coolers and freezers to ensure the quality of their food products. Paul Dulude, director of bakery operations, was also concerned about power outages that adversely affect the defrost clock settings, leading to defrost cycles that occur during busy production times. Dulude wanted a monitoring system that would alert him to the need to adjust the defrost clock settings in a timely manner to make sure that defrost cycles occurred only during nonpeak production times.

Solution

Wright’s management team selected Onset’s award-winning, cost-effective HOBOnet remote monitoring system to track temperature in the facility’s bakery and dairy production refrigeration units, as well as its retail coolers and display cases. HOBOnet is designed to work with a flexible HOBO RX station as the system’s core component, and the team decided on the HOBO MicroRX cellular station. The station was set up in the main part of the facility, with wireless temperature sensors deployed at key locations. With the sensors’ ability to communicate wirelessly up to 1,500 feet and through the walls of cold storage units, the HOBOnet system provided the team at Wright’s Dairy Farm with an easy way to monitor temperature, without any expensive or time-consuming equipment modifications.

The HOBO MicroRX station automatically uploads sensor data to HOBOlink, Onset’s innovative cloud-based platform. With HOBOlink, users can: view temperature trends for all refrigeration and freezer units from anywhere, at any time, via the internet; schedule automated delivery of data; and set up and manage alarm notifications that are automatically sent by text or email should conditions exceed user-set thresholds.

Results

Shortly after deploying the HOBOnet system, it proved its worth when Dulude received an automatic text message that alerted him to an out-of-range temperature in one of his cold storage units, confirming that the unit had to be replaced. And now, viewing charts of temperatures throughout the day helps the management team ensure that defrost cycles in refrigeration units occur only during non-peak production hours, so more consistent temperatures are maintained.

For those of us who’ve felt tied to our business, like I did, the HOBOnet system is a game-changer! With HOBOnet, my staff and I can monitor thousands of dollars’ worth of refrigerated/frozen inventory – from anywhere! Thank you, Onset.