Griddles, fryers, electric hot-plates, ovens, refrigerators, air conditioners: these are just some example of energy consuming devices in a restaurant. Most of them are not on 24 hours a day, nevertheless energy saving is mandatory to reduce the electric bill.
That’s why power monitoring and power management are very important:
- To identify in real time how much energy you are consuming from different utilities’ (electricity, water, gas) during any given demand interval, then switching off sheddable loads, that is loads that can be easily turned off and restarted, without serious impact process (cooking, refrigeration or other);
- To apply “peak shaving” technology to reduce energy costs and/or electric cuts when load demand exceeds contractual threshold;
- To have real time failure detection, also with sms advice;
- To do predictive and remote failure analysis, optimizing maintenance activity, reducing lead time and failure rates.
This kind of solution was designed by Inoma, an Italian company active all over the country with a strong expertize in innovation technology. The EASYPROFIT solution, already installed in two restaurants with energy cost saving higher than 20% and investment return in less than two years, uses Omron’s power monitoring devices.
“We choose Omron for the reliability of its products, and for the characteristics of KM1, with which it is possible to save space, thanks to the multi circuits capability, to reduce wiring, thanks to the Master Slave architecture, and to measure with high precision even currents below 5% of the nominal value. In this experience four platforms, each of one can connect up to five KM1 devices, manage 55 circuits saving about one square meter of space on the electric panel in comparison with other brands’ devices. Using Omron technology we could reduce end user price and increase sales forecast”, say Gianluca Giovanardi and Morgan Cabbia, partner in Inoma Srl.
EASYPROFIT solution is designed according to I-Cloud architecture, and allows remote monitoring and management. From Personal Computer, and/or Smartphone, Notebook, Tablet, you can set up timing to switch on and off different devices and you can manage smart peak shaving It is a quite good example of IoT applied to energy efficiency in food service industry.
“That’s an interesting experience to show how industrial automations expertize can be applied for energy efficiency: we used the energy monitor devices KM1 together with SYSMAC development environment and devices, our new automation platform. Specifically, Omron’s engineers designed, in strong cooperation with technicians from Inoma, firmware for Machine Controller NJ.” says Andrea Fassanelli, field application engineer in Omron.
