Draeger’s Market is an upscale grocery chain with four successful stores located in the San Francisco Bay area, in California, USA. The Draeger’s legacy spans 95 years of serving families and culinary professionals in this area, specializing in gourmet items, produce, meat, wine, liquor, prepared bakery and deli foods, flowers and housewares.
Draeger’s mission is to be the best in food, wine, and service. Everything from the design of the marketplace to the equipment inside supports this mission. In keeping with this goal, the team decided to upgrade the refrigeration motors in the dairy department of their San Mateo store.
Goal
The goal of this project was to upgrade the existing faulty ECM motors with a more reliable solution
The dairy department refrigeration motors, like all case and walk-in motors, must withstand inhospitable conditions, including exposure to liquids and extreme temperatures.
Thus, the existing ECM motors have traditionally been a source of failure, resulting in inconsistent airflow and icing that required urgent replacement before the equipment temperatures rose and spoiled food must be discarded.
The goal of this project was to upgrade the existing faulty ECM motors with a more reliable solution. The hope was that the replacement process would be so simple that it could be performed in a day, with minimal impact to the customer experience.
Project
The Draeger facility management team led the initiative to replace the dairy walk-in cooler’s 50-watt motors and a line of refrigeration case 12-watt motors with the ultra-high efficient Q-Sync motors from QM Power, Inc.
The case motors were replaced in five minutes, due to the universal shroud and straight lyall plug
These motors were particularly appealing due to their ease of installation, IP65 certification, design life of 10 years, and efficiency.
The installation process went very smoothly, as intended. The case motors were replaced in five minutes, due to the universal shroud and straight lyall plug. Likewise, the walk-in replacement was completed very quickly, in approximately 15 minutes from start to finish.
Results
A year after the installation, the motors continue to perform as expected. Peter Draeger states, “In August of 2021, we underwent a pilot install of Q-Sync motors in a line-up of dairy reach-in display cases and a dairy walk-in cooler.”
He adds, “We were very impressed with the quick, easy install, and since the installation we’ve been happy with the reliability of these motors. We’ve also seen the potential for significant energy savings compared to our baseline EC motors, showing up to 40% input watt reduction per unit.”