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Remote monitoring system for chillers "RISSA"

Aiming for energy savings in buildings using RISSA, a remote monitoring system for chillers

Contributing to the achievement of SDGs by conserving energy in large buildings

“Global warming” is a major theme of the SDGs. What can we do in our daily lives to prevent it from progressing?　Try changing the means of transportation to walking or cycling. Let's sign a contract with an electric power company that handles renewable energy such as solar and wind power. Above all, I think one of the most familiar challenges is “saving electricity.” It is about reducing power consumption and reducing CO₂ generation due to power generation. In particular, an “air conditioner” is a device that consumes a lot of electricity at home. In addition to setting an appropriate temperature, familiar “maintenance” such as cleaning dirty filters to maintain air conditioning performance also contributes to the SDGs.

So what happens if the air conditioner is not for a “home” but for a “huge building”? Approximately 40% or more of an office building's energy consumption is called “air conditioning,” and maintenance of related equipment is a major step towards carbon neutrality through enormous energy savings. We are a top class share company for “chillers” and “hot and cold water heaters,” which are the heart of high-output air conditioners that air the entire facility. However, maintaining these devices, which can be several meters long and tall, is by no means easy. Buildings

where chillers are installed are all places such as stores, hospitals, public facilities, offices, factory plants, etc., and “regional heat supply facilities” that collectively provide air conditioning in multiple buildings, and air conditioning continues to operate 24 hours a day, and each refrigerator in it is affected by a different environment.

Developed "RISSA" to remotely monitor conditions

What method is optimal for maintaining them so that they operate safely at all times? Therefore, Ebara has continued to search for ways to “remotely monitor the status of our products.” It started in the 1980s. The operation status of the refrigerator was recorded with a control panel and sensors, and data every 30 minutes was checked from the center via a wired line. In the unlikely event of a breakdown, an alert is issued, and an Ebara engineer rushed to the scene. It is a system established in an age where the internet has not yet spread.


These services were updated in 2022 as technology evolved. The new refrigerator remote maintenance system named “RISSA” monitors the state every minute with LTE, and the number of items that can be measured with sensors has also increased drastically. The issue that RISSA aims to solve is updating the work itself called “maintenance.”

Currently, parts replacement schedules for chillers are determined based on the number of years they have been in operation, and patterned inspections are required once every few months. Regular inspections prevent sudden trouble, and in the unlikely event of trouble, our technicians use measuring equipment and five senses to diagnose the device from sound, vibration, etc. If this work can be replaced with technology, the diagnosis is equivalent to regular inspections every day, and the burden of routine inspections on customers will also be reduced, leading to “labor saving.”

Aiming for "whole-city" energy savings while preventing breakdowns

RISSA can detect failure signs that can be managed by trends such as temperature and pressure data inside the refrigerator with high accuracy. It also contributes to “energy saving.” In the future, big data called refrigerator operation data will be analyzed with AI, and operation data for each equipment will be optimized so that energy consumption of refrigerators and peripheral equipment is minimized. We are able to propose energy savings that are optimal overall, which is possible only because we have the know-how of chillers, cooling towers, and pumps.

A data infrastructure to manage these functions in the cloud has also been launched. The “EBARA Maintenance Cloud,” which was commercialized in November 2022, is a cloud service that monitors the facility environment in total through sensors attached to devices. Devices that can be monitored are pumps, blowers, cooling towers, etc. Furthermore, by linking RISSA to the EBARA maintenance cloud, integrated monitoring and data utilization at facilities where multiple devices are connected is also possible on the user side, contributing to user labor saving. A network for maintenance will be formed, and while preventing accidents through individually optimized parts replacement, we will significantly advance energy saving “throughout the city.”