Overview
More cooling. Less work. Smarter use of heat.
Daniel Street Fish Market needed more than another refrigeration upgrade. The site needed a smarter system: one that could protect product, control peak demand, improve freezer performance and make better use of the energy already moving through the plant.
The Challenge
The old logic had reached its limit.
The issue was not simply whether the rooms were cold enough. The real challenge was how the whole refrigeration system was performing under load — including peak demand, freezer capacity, humidity, defrost energy and wasted heat.
The existing refrigeration systems were robust, familiar and, in many ways, a product of another era — a time when electricity was cheaper, peak demand mattered less, and efficiency was not yet the organising principle of industrial refrigeration.
But the commercial reality had changed. Every time the compressors started, the input energy required was immense — almost seven times their normal running current. The systems were not just using electricity. They were creating demand spikes. And those spikes were shaping the customer’s energy profile, and ultimately the bill.
The challenge was not that the refrigeration had failed. The challenge was that the old way of running the plant had become too costly, too energy-hungry and too wasteful.
The Solution
A staged intervention, not a single equipment swap.
SETPOINT looked at the refrigeration system as a connected energy system, not a set of separate pieces of equipment. The solution combined smarter control, improved cooling design, heat recovery and sub-cooling to make the plant work harder with less waste.
Variable Speed Drive control
The freezer condensing system was upgraded with custom-engineered semi-hermetic equipment and Danfoss Variable Speed Drive control, replacing blunt high-demand starting with controlled ramping and capacity control.
Prep-area cooling
A dedicated cooling system lowered the temperature of the middle room, reducing the load created when freezer and coldroom doors opened into warmer, more humid air.
System intelligence
EC condenser fans, smarter control and better system integration helped the refrigeration assets work together rather than operate as isolated pieces of plant.
Heat recovery + glycol defrost
Waste heat from refrigeration was captured into a thermal mass tank and used to support defrosting, eliminating the need for costly electric defrost cycles on one system.
Cascade sub-cooling
Spare capacity from the prep-area system was used to sub-cool the freezer liquid lines, increasing compressor capacity while reducing running current.
From refrigeration to circular energy.
The two large freezer systems generated enough waste heat to maintain the thermal mass tank above 70 degrees. SETPOINT saw unused potential sitting inside the system and integrated a third heat exchanger to transfer that heat into mains water.
The result was a dedicated hot washdown supply, producing virtually unlimited free hot water at 65 degrees and above.
Smarter Controls
Smarter controls, room averaging and load shifting.
A connected freezer-room upgrade for the same seafood operation also showed how much performance can be gained from better control logic, not just larger equipment.
The freezer room had heavy forklift-door use during the day, which created volatile temperature spikes and made the system work harder than it needed to. SETPOINT introduced a new temperature sensor design using room averaging, helping the system respond to the true room condition rather than overreacting to short-term spikes at one point in the space.
That change helped smooth the temperature cycle and extend unit off-cycles by 300%.
Frigbot remote temperature monitoring was also used as more than an alarm system. It provided data for analysing operational patterns, temperature behaviour and system response. With that information, the control setpoint could be adjusted slightly higher overnight, when load was lower and product temperatures were more stable — reducing unnecessary running during peak and non-renewable periods, while keeping product conditions consistent.
A calmer, more stable system.
The result was not just lower demand. It was a calmer, more stable refrigeration system: fewer starts, less short cycling, smoother temperature control and better protection for product shelf life.
The Outcome
The result was not simply a colder room.
The result was a better-performing refrigeration system, not just a colder room. Capacity increased, peak demand dropped, room conditions improved and waste heat was recovered for practical use on site.
By recovering heat from the refrigeration plant, SETPOINT helped the site produce virtually unlimited hot water from energy that was already being generated. With the chillers running 24/7, the system produces more hot water than the business can use during normal washdown periods — at temperatures high enough that the water needs to be mixed down before use.
- Combined refrigeration capacity increased from 50 kW @ -25SST to 66 kW @ -25SST.
- Peak demand across the total site was reduced by more than 80%.
- Approximately 125 amps per phase were removed from the demand profile.
- Room conditions improved, with lower humidity and more stable temperatures.
- Electric defrost cycles were eliminated for one system, saving approximately $2,500 per year.
- Free hot water was generated as a by-product for use across the site.
Daniel Street Fish Market became one of SETPOINT’s largest circular system projects to date — not because one machine was replaced with a better one, but because the entire refrigeration environment was rethought as an integrated energy system.
