CASE STUDY School District of Washington - Washington, Missouri

Summary

Spanning approximately 260 square miles, the School District of Washington is geographically one of the largest school districts in Missouri. Maintenance of the district’s 11 schools with a limited staff, presents ongoing challenges for district technicians, as well as Director of Food Service, Joy Chartrau.

According to Chartrau, the KE2 Evaporator Efficiency (KE2 Evap) controller provided a way to help her manage the district’s walk-in freezers and coolers. Chartrau explains, I’ve wanted a monitoring system for a long time; the ability to have definite numbers for HAACP, without having kitchen personnel manually recording the temperature data for each case. Being able to see if there is an emergency with this system, review the diagnostics, prepare to fix the problem and order parts, a lot can be done prior to our maintenance staff being on site. This not only will save dollars on employee's time but also travel. This is a good thing for a district our size.

The district operates five facilities with walk-in freezers/coolers with a total of 11 KE2 Therm controllers installed. When the district first installed the KE2 Evap controllers, the diagnostic capability revealed several system issues. The district was able to quickly identify and correct the issues because they could be seen using the KE2 Evap. And, as maintenance technician Darrick Luko stated, It’s easier to wire and understand than our current time clocks and thermostats. Additionally, Maintenance Supervisor Glen Bade was impressed that by adding pressure transducers and suction temperature sensors, they were able to monitor the superheat on the KE2 Evap without even changing the existing mechanical TEV. Remarked Bade, This will make our job much easier, we can watch and diagnose the system.

Chartrau explains another benefit of the controller – reducing product spoilage. E-mailed or text message alarm alerts provided by the KE2 Therm controller are a huge benefit. Over the summer there are two months where no one is in the school to check the units. We've found freezers before that were down and everything had to be pitched. Thanks to the KE2 Evap controller, that problem has been eliminated gaining approval for the project was quite easy commented Chartrau, We took KE2 Therm’s case study data from the Atlanta school district, and the projection for our school district on energy savings, pricing, and the rebate rough estimate and presented that information to our CFO. When she saw the rebates and projected energy savings to the district it was a no brainer.

The next step for the School District of Washington is to install the KE2 Case Control on all reach-in cases, when available in 2012. The KE2 Case Control is also networkable and can be controlled and monitored remotely. With six facilities in the district using only reach-ins, there is a great deal of anticipation for the KE2 Case Control launch.

Conclusion

The easy to use KE2 Evaporator Efficiency exceeded the demands of the School District of Washington by providing the remote monitoring and control they wanted, providing energy savings, and all with a payback of 18 months. The payback includes labor costs, but does not include the local utility (Ameren Missouri) rebate. With the Ameren rebate, the payback is seven months.

BEFORE using standard time clock – 15 defrosts in 5 days (3 defrosts per day)

AFTER with the KE2 Evap controllers installed – 2 defrosts in 5 days (87% reduction in defrosts)