Industrial refrigeration is essential to frozen‑food manufacturing and one of the most energy‑intensive systems in a plant. In some facilities, refrigeration can account for up to 70% of total electricity use, directly impacting operating costs and greenhouse‑gas emissions.

For a large French-fry manufacturer operating a fleet of refrigeration plants, the challenge went beyond energy alone. The company needed better visibility into system performance across sites.

They also needed to address a growing skills gap in the refrigeration workforce. As experienced technicians retired faster than new ones entered the field, maintaining and optimizing complex systems has become difficult.

Historically, refrigeration equipment was ranked and operated using conventional lead‑lag logic, focused on maintaining cooling demand, not energy efficiency.

While operators could manage major changes, they simply didn’t have the time or tools to continuously evaluate subtle performance shifts or calculate which combination of compressors, condensers and evaporators delivered the best coefficient of performance (COP), the measure of efficiency in a refrigeration system.

The manufacturer turned to their longstanding automation innovation partner, Actemium, a member of the Rockwell Automation PartnerNetwork.

Autonomous Energy Optimization

To address these challenges, Actemium developed RtCOP, an AI-application for refrigeration optimization.

RtCOP is designed to continuously select the most energy‑efficient operating configuration, automatically and at scale, acting like a virtual operator running 24/7.

The application continuously evaluates every possible combination of compressors, condensers and evaporators, calculating the COP for each scenario in real time.

When a more efficient configuration is identified, the system adjusts equipment operation, turning assets on or off and optimizing variable‑speed devices, then repeats the process continuously.

PlantPAx provided the processing speed, memory and transparency needed to support this math‑intensive application.

Rather than relying on a black‑box approach, Actemium built RtCOP within a modern DCS framework that supports structured text, ladder logic and modular add‑on instructions.

This approach makes the solution scalable, explainable and supports the digital transformation prioritized by the manufacturer.

Lower Energy Use, Higher Efficiency at Scale

Early results from the first deployment showed the French fry manufacturer achieved a 20% increase in COP, translating to approximately 17% energy savings.

On an annual basis, this improvement represented around $130,000 in cost savings per facility, while also reducing environmental impact.

Beyond energy savings, the optimized operation reduced strain on refrigeration assets, improving reliability and long‑term equipment health.

Perhaps most importantly, RtCOP introduced a new operational model for the refrigeration industry as a whole: energy‑based equipment ranking performed autonomously, continuously and consistently.

This is something human operators simply cannot do in real time.

“We see this as something that can work across plants, across sites, and eventually across the industry,” said Jim Gillis, general manager, Actemium Atlantic Canada.

With successful deployments underway, the solution is now being scaled across the customer’s full fleet of refrigeration plants, with KPI dashboards enabling performance comparison from site to site.