A Platform for Greentech Success

Enhancing sustainability

There's an enormous energy waster lurking in every commercial kitchen, and yet it's so commonplace that most of us may not give it a second thought. Commercial exhaust hoods expel huge volumes of warm air from commercial kitchens. The exhaust air gets replaced with cool outside air, which must be reheated to keep the building comfortable in cool weather.

Theoretically, installing a heat exchanger would allow this waste heat to be recovered, but conventional heat exchangers are no match for the grease and soot of a commercial kitchen and quickly clog. Enjay, based in Sweden, developed its Lepido heat exchanger specifically for polluted air streams, making it ideal for commercial kitchens and other industrial applications. Lepido is a greentech solution that works reliably to recover waste heat from exhaust air without clogging. That heat can then be used to preheat the fresh air coming from outside, recovering about 90 percent of the energy that would otherwise be lost—reducing a restaurant's electricity consumption by as much as 85,000 kilowatt-hours annually.

There's immense potential to capture and reuse or store waste heat. "We've known for a long time that industries are wasting a lot of excess heat," says Nils Lekeberg, vice president and founder of Enjay. "Some suggest that if we could recover the excess heat from all sources across Europe, including industry, it would be enough to power the whole region."

Energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy are the two main pillars for limiting temperature rise to the 1.5 degrees Celsius target set by the 2015 Paris Accords. "Renewable sources are sometimes controversial, but no one disputes that every kilowatt-hour you save decreases the strain on the grid," says Lekeberg. "The cost of wasting excess heat has tripled or quadrupled in Europe over the last year and a half, so management teams are really starting to recognize it as a priority, and stricter regulations now mandate conservation."

Energy savings as a service

Enjay began testing its Lepido heat exchangers in 2016 in Burger King restaurants. "We realized very early on that we needed to be able to report back to our customers so that they could see that the energy savings we promised were actually there. We needed Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity to each system to make that happen," explains Lekeberg. "Europe and other regions are also facing growing regulations mandating energy conservation. IoT allows us to provide customers with the data necessary to demonstrate regulatory compliance."

As the business progressed, it also became clear that IoT connectivity could help Enjay in other ways. When a restaurant chain builds a new location, there's money in the construction budget to cover the cost of a heat exchanger. However, budget is not typically allocated for retrofits, so it is much harder to get Lepido heat exchangers into the thousands of existing commercial kitchens.

"We realized that our business model might be a lot healthier if we could move from direct sales to energy savings as a service," says Lekeberg. "Rather than send a single invoice for the equipment upfront, we want to strike a deal with the customer to share their energy savings with us over a longer period. The customer avoids the upfront costs, and it creates a predictable monthly revenue stream for Enjay. That approach is critically dependent on having reliable data to determine the savings."

Partnering for IoT success

When Enjay was thinking about adding remote connectivity to Lepido, it looked first to the construction industry, which installs its equipment in new restaurants. “Unfortunately, the most common industry solution required a large cabinet that was expensive, bulky, and not very user-friendly," says Lekeberg.

Instead, Enjay partnered with Swedish telecommunications company and Cisco partner, Tele2 IoT. “Choosing the right components to get started with IoT was just a jungle to us. That was the starting point for our Tele2 relationship, and it worked out very well," says Lekeberg. “They also helped us get started with IoT software to manage our connectivity and have provided us with great training and support."

Tele2 IoT's 2CONTROL is powered by Cisco IoT Control Center, which is a cloud-based IoT connectivity management platform. Cisco IoT Control Center enables organizations to manage and monitor IoT device connectivity from a single, centralized location. It provides tools for device onboarding, provisioning, monitoring, and management, as well as analytics and reporting capabilities.

"You don't typically expect this type of solution to be easy to use or easy to integrate," says Lekeberg. "The user-friendliness of this solution has been a pleasant surprise, and it provides very high levels of data security. The whole experience has been really positive."

Using a variety of equipment sensors, Enjay gathers 53 separate data points from its connected heat exchangers. Temperature data is key to understanding energy savings, while measuring air pressure inside the unit simplifies maintenance. "By monitoring the air pressure drop in our installed units, we can tell if they need service. However, our systems stay clear if customers follow the normal cleaning schedules that are mandated for commercial exhaust hoods by law," says Lekeberg. "This means they don't have to do anything they weren't already doing. So far, the only time a unit has gotten blocked was when a big ball of paper got sucked up."

Expanding horizons

Enjay currently has customers in Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, Benelux, and the Baltics, with plans to expand next into either Germany or the United States. Because Tele2 IoT has a global presence—and Cisco IoT Control Center is a global platform—the company won't have to change its IoT solution or add partners as it grows.

The commercial kitchen use case yields substantial benefits in every region. "The number of kilowatt-hours a Lepido unit can save varies somewhat across geographies based on outside temperature, but it's quite similar between Stockholm and London," explains Lekeberg. "However, the savings in terms of carbon dioxide produced can really vary from region to region. Sweden's electrical grid is pretty green, so a typical Burger King here saves about three metric tons of [carbon dioxide] equivalent per year, while the same restaurant in Poland would save 70 metric tons per year. Most markets are between those two."

Future use cases

To expand its reach, Enjay is exploring additional use cases for its heat exchanger. "Our product takes excess heat and transforms it into a new power source. It can really make a dent in the energy bill across a range of industrial applications," says Lekeberg. "Lepido works with any source of excess heat in a temperature range from 86 degrees Fahrenheit to 482 degrees Fahrenheit."

Pilot deployments in commercial laundries and other facilities are already underway. Lekeberg elaborates: "An industrial laundry generates a lot of excess heat from tumble dryers and other devices. Lepido avoids clogs due to lint while capturing the waste heat and looping it back to preheat the water used in the washing process, saving a lot of energy as a result. Earlier this year we also finished an installation in Europe's largest pancake production factory, that will save 1.5 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. The scale as we move into industry is huge."

As the company expands its target markets, IoT connectivity will be essential. "Our Cisco IoT solution lets us easily monitor and manage our equipment connectivity, so we get the data we need to offer an energy-savings-as-a-service business model in other industries," Lekeberg concludes.