Airedale Cloud Diagnostics

Airedale Cloud Diagnostics™ is a remote HVAC monitoring and diagnostics platform developed for predictive HVAC maintenance in mission critical applications and multiple site HVAC systems.

Airedale Cloud Diagnostics is a highly secure, military grade system that is deployed on your sites to collect and collate data from critical HVAC equipment. Data is seamlessly transmitted to our sophisticated cutting edge cloud diagnostics engine to enable anomaly detection, giving you predictive HVAC maintenance insights. This prevents small problems from leading to equipment failure.

Airedale’s extensive field experience has been leveraged to bring HVAC maintenance into the digital world. Using leading-edge data science and IoT technology, our controls teams have developed powerful diagnostic tools that include a ground-breaking refrigerant leak detection algorithm.

How it works

A Solution allowing HVAC products to be connected, monitored and analysed via a secured communication channel to the Airedale Cloud Diagnostics cloud.

Offers live dashboard and alerts, ongoing performance analysis & predictive maintenance.

Ad-hoc user interface or “Smartboard” visualizes real-time data.

Ability to analyse performance of unit over time using machine learning techniques.

Ability to recognise “failure patterns” and warn the user of a potential failure before it happens.

If a drop in performance against operating conditions is detected, this will act as an early warning system for the customer/maintenance team to investigate further.

Key Features

Leak Detection
One of the main problem areas for refrigerant based cooling systems is leakage of refrigerant into the atmosphere, which can happen for several reasons including degradation of copper coils over time.

Often refrigerant leaks aren’t detected until too late, at which point an engineer is called to site to find a non-operational system. If we can catch this earlier by detecting small losses in performance or changes in the power profile then the benefits are huge in terms of environmental impact, operational impact and overall cost savings to the end user.

The ability for connected units to be able to learn from and compare against each other utilising intelligent unit modelling means that the performance analysis techniques continually improve and get stronger over time.

In our tests we have been able to detect refrigerant leaks as small as 5% of total refrigerant volume instantaneously, we are now gathering data to qualify the smallest leak.
Performance analysis
Connected units will be analysed for performance utilising many algorithms and machine learning techniques. If a drop in performance against operating conditions is detected, this will act as an early warning system for the customer/maintenance team to investigate further. Early intervention can prevent prolonged periods of higher energy consumption and eventual breakdown, and all the costs associated with that.

The system will judge the unit’s performance on a variety of factors – for a refrigerant based cooling system for example superheat, sub-cool, suction/head pressures, water flow/airflow are all analysed for deviations against “normalised” behaviour, however the overall output of the unit such as cooling duty/capacity, efficiency, power consumption against its operating conditions are all considered instantaneously and over time as well.
Security
Airedale’s products are part of the critical infrastructure of a building or a datacentre and therefore it is imperative that they are secured both from physical and network access, Airedale Cloud Diagnostics has been designed with security in mind, utilizing the latest technology and security practices to protect your units from unauthorized access.

Security is important in all parts of the solution.
Gateway/ Data aggregator
• The hardware provides isolation between ethernet ports to protect and isolate the network interface that communicates with the external cloud and the one communicating with Airedale’s units.
• An additional optional RS485 port is available to communicate with Airedale’s units, for additional security and segregation in extremely sensitive applications.
• Data stored and saved in the internal flash memory is encrypted and data cannot be retrieved even if flash memory is removed and analysed
• Local and remote access to the gateway is only available via pre-authorized personal SSH public keys and it is provided to Airedale personnel on a need-to-have basis.
Predictive maintenance
The system will utilise data to recognise “failure patterns” and warn the user of a potential failure before it happens. This can reduce the costs significantly by again avoiding call out and breakdown scenarios. For example, a gradual increase in power consumption could be normal, if the unit is working against an increased load over time. However, paired with other indicators such a gradual change in normal system pressures could indicate a breakdown is waiting to happen. There are also additional sensors and systems that we are building into our products to assist with this, for example vibration sensors in fans.
Live dashboard
Airedale Cloud Diagnostics allows dashboard and visualization with an ad-hoc user interface called “Smartboards” within the portal, communication between the gateway is live and data updated in real time. Data aggregation can be configured to report the latest data received (last value) as well as extracting KPIs for a comprehensive visual analysis of the unit’s performance. (e.g. chiller average supply water temperature for last 7 rolling days).
Load profile
The system will analyse the profile of the load on the unit and determine if there is a better operating state. For example, if an air handling unit serves a meeting room and is only used at certain times of the day but is left on all day and wasting energy then the system could detect using this and highlight to the user, avoiding wasted energy. The longer-term goal would be to have this behavioural change implemented autonomously without user intervention.
Better product selection
Airedale can use the data collected to analyse and determine how to better improve our products based on actual customer usage profiles. Or even use those insights to select a more suitably sized product in each scenario.
Remote cloud
• Access to the Airedale Cloud Diagnostics portal is via a web based portal with valid SSL certificate, using the same technology as internet banking and other secure portals
• Users configuration and access is via a dedicated software tool called “Access Manager”
• Each user is assigned a dedicated personal login, role and association with one or more groups
• A role based access model (i.e. engineer / data scientist / operator) provides access to relevant tools
• Groups (e.g. sites for one customer) are fully segregated and access is only allowed to users that are part of the group.
Data transfer
• Communication between the gateway and the remote Airedale cloud server is allowed exclusively via the point-to-point VPN connection (OpenVPN) configured with pre-shared unique encryption keys
• VPN encrypts communication between the gateway and the remote server, using the latest encryption technology
• Firewall blocks any access from and to the gateway which hasn’t been pre-authorized

Download the interactive brochure for more information >

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Easy to install, with intelligent algorithms and continuous improvements to data models, Airedale Cloud Diagnostics puts the power and the data in your hands via live dashboards with visual analysis.

Early detection of refrigerant leaks and anomalous behaviour is instantly reported; minimising downtime, increasing efficiency and reducing maintenance costs.

Interested to learn more? Get in touch with our team using the form below, and book a demo.

Book a Cloud Diagnostics demo

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