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Preventing Overheating HVAC

Challenge

A major manufacturer had a production line with heavy equipment that was managed by control rooms that needed to have their temperature regulated. These control rooms generated a lot of heat, and this became even more of a problem in Florida summers. When these rooms got too hot, their equipment started to fail, since these rooms were unoccupied and remote this could happen without anyone knowing. When the equipment failed, this resulted in production lines being shut down. This was not only a problem because of the loss of revenue because of the down time, but also because the cost to restart the line was significant.

Process and Solution
How We Approached the Challenge

1. Work with subject matter experts to identify what could be measured on the cooling or HVAC
 (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) units to identify failures before they occurred.

2. Identify the in-range and out of tolerance values for the measured values.

3. Create distribution groups of who should be notified when failures occur.

4. Adapt our general purpose proto-typing board to capture data  

5. Implement connectivity to send data over cellular connections for simplicity and reliability

6. Customize NuvIoT to receive and process sensor data

7. Build dashboards to visualize data and manage devices

Results
Our Answer to the Challenge

Hardware was installed to monitor 5 HVAC units to monitor Return Temperature, Supply Temperature, Compressor Current and Suction Pressure. Algorithms where implemented to look at both current readings as well as trends such as decrease of cooling differential over a 3 day period. When error conditions where detected both text messages and emails were sent to distribution groups so the equipment could be proactively maintained before a failure could occur.

Call to Action