WA’s first choice for commercial refrigeration

Refrigeration rack systems and remote refrigeration

Individual compressor systems play an important role in commercial refrigeration and are by far the most used method of cooling individual fridges and freezers.  However, when it comes to multiple fridges, freezers, cool and freezer rooms in a single venue or facility it may be more appropriate to use a remote refrigeration system or a refrigeration rack system.

There are many advantages to using this kind of system and the following a just a few.

Capacity control. Since the whole rack of compressors provides the required capacity for the connected refrigerated rooms, as the total load reduces, (for example in the middle of the night) individual compressors can be cycled on and off to match the needed capacity thus creating significant energy savings in the region of 30%

Redundancy. In a rack-based system with redundancy built in, if one compressor fails, the other compressors can normally carry the load. This gives you much needed time to get a technician to site and have repairs made without any downtime.

Running costs.  The biggest electrical load on any fridge is when the refrigeration system kicks in.  If you have a larger venue or facility with multiple fridges, having those units switch on and off, day in day out can be an enormous strain on your electricity bill.

On a multiple compressor rack with a variable speed lead compressor, the requirements to switch on, switch off are greatly reduced, thus offering huge savings on power.

Typically, a rack style system will be sized at around 80% of the systems full load because other than at initial turn on it is extremely rare for all the connected items to need full power at the same time.

Servicing. When it comes to servicing commercial refrigeration, on a larger venue or facility a remote rack system makes even more sense.  With all the major moving parts located externally or in a plant room, 90% of the technicians work is carried out away from your kitchen, bar, staff and customers.

Heat rejection and cleaning. Remote refrigeration is always away from the heat and grease sources often found in commercial kitchens and bars, this greatly reduces the required maintenance and enables the system to run more efficiently thus saving more money.

In the case of a fridge with an integral refrigeration system, this could be sucking in dirty, greasy air within a kitchen and blowing out hot air into a room that now needs extra refrigeration load to cool the room.  A remote system solves both these problems, your heat rejection is away from your working areas (saves power on air con) and your system is cleaner and therefore more efficient.