Danfoss has entered into a collaboration with Microsoft to give refrigeration and HVAC customers access to a new cloud platform powered by Microsoft Azure.
Danfoss says the cloud-based services will enable food retailers to reduce food loss, reduce energy consumption and optimise overall store performance. The cloud infrastructure of Microsoft Azure will provide scalability and data security, it says.
The Danfoss Cooling Cloud Suite will increase operational efficiency by processing and analysing data from refrigeration assets, HVAC, lighting and other assets. The data is managed in a secure way and delivers valuable insight to the food retail store in easy to use user interfaces.
Dr Jan-Hendrik Sewing, Danfoss senior vice president electronic controllers & services, said: “The Danfoss Cooling Cloud Suite will help food retail stores focus on their core business by optimising and automating current processes as well as providing actionable insights by, eg, bench marking stores to identify top and low performers. This will lead to reduced operational costs and energy consumption and an increase in sales and marketing effectiveness.According to Danfoss, monitoring of the connected assets ensures immediate action in case of compressor failure, refrigerant leaks or other issues. Temperatures are also automatically monitored, with alarms sent to the store if temperature thresholds are exceeded.
Sensors, controls, and gateways can be retrofitted in any store.
“With Danfoss’ application expertise, we see a great opportunity to add value in the food retail sector,” says Paul Maher, general manager of industry experiences at Microsoft. “With Danfoss we bring one of the strongest IIoT use cases to date in refrigeration to our customers.”
“We will build on this collaboration and continue to invest in new cloud services to the industries we have served successfully for more than 80 years with the ambition to reduce food waste and energy consumption” said Danfoss Cooling president Jürgen Fischer.
