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Industrial 2025 📍 Chennai, Tamil Nadu

How Neemak Aluminium in Chennai Stopped Running Four Chillers by Hand

Every start. Every stop. Every sequence change. A person had to do it. Until EnSmart arrived in July 2025 and changed all of that in two weeks.

Industrial Chiller Automation · Modbus to BACnet · EnSmart Controller · Chennai · 2025

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Chillers Integrated

14 Days

Full Installation to Commissioning

100%

Automated Chiller Sequencing

Manual Operation Required

The Challenge

The Chiller Problem Nobody Talks About

Laxman is the Operations Manager at Neemak Aluminium in Chennai. He knows this plant inside out. The machines. The shifts. The heat — and Chennai has plenty of that.
But four chillers were running entirely on manual control.
Every morning someone had to start them. Every evening someone had to stop them. If one chiller needed to hand over to another, a person had to make that call. If the wrong person was on shift, or if someone forgot — the cooling would go out of sequence.
In a metal processing plant, that is not just uncomfortable. That is a production problem.
Laxman knew this could not continue. One wrong call on the wrong day and the line stops.

The result:

All 4 chillers started, stopped, and sequenced by hand — every single day
No central screen — operators walked the floor to check what was running
Sequencing knowledge lived in people's heads, not in any system
No fault logging — problems were found only after damage was already done
Chiller controllers were isolated — no connection to any central system

Why This Project Stood Out

This Was Not a Simple On-Off Job — It Was a Full Protocol Bridge

Two Protocols. One Panel. One Flow.

The field devices talked Modbus. The chillers had BACnet-native controllers. EnSmart's controller sat between them. It read the Modbus values from the field, converted them to BACnet, and sent them to the BACnet-native chiller controllers. All of this happened inside one panel.

The Sequence Logic Lives in the Chiller Controller

The logic that decides which chiller starts first, when the next one comes on, and how they rotate — that was written directly into the BACnet-native chiller controller. Not in a laptop. Not in a software layer. Inside the controller itself.

Values Go Up. Commands Come Down.

Think of it like a two-lane road. Values travel up — from the field, through Modbus, into the EnSmart controller, converted to BACnet, into the BACnet-native chiller controller. Commands travel the other way — from the BACnet-native chiller controller, back through BACnet, through the EnSmart controller, out to the field. Clean. Bidirectional. Always in sync.

One Panel. Direct Wiring. Nothing Extra.

EnSmart DDC controller, IO modules, and EnNode gateway — all inside one panel. Field cables came straight in. No junction boxes in between. No extra hops.

14 Days on a Live Plant Site

The EnSmart team arrived on a working plant floor. Machines running. People working. In 14 days — panel up, wired, integrated, sequenced, tested, handed over.

Who This Case Study Is For

Does Any of This Sound Like Your Plant?

Relevant for teams managing

Aluminium and Metal Processing Plants
Heavy Industrial Manufacturing Units
Any facility with a central chiller plant running on manual control
Plants with BACnet-native chiller controllers and no BMS connection

Relevant Roles

Operations Managers responsible for plant cooling and uptime
Facility and Maintenance Engineers tired of manual equipment rounds
Project Managers scoping BMS for industrial sites
MEP Consultants designing chiller automation for factories

What You'll Learn Inside

The Architecture Behind the Automation

Inside the full case study, you'll see:

How Modbus field values are read, converted to BACnet, and delivered to a BACnet-native chiller controller in real time
How chiller sequence logic is written directly inside the BACnet-native chiller controller — and why that is the right place for it
What hardware EnSmart supplied — DDC controller, IO modules, EnNode gateway — all in one panel, directly wired from the field
How the two-way communication works — values travelling up from the field, commands travelling back down
How 14 days was enough to go from an empty panel to a fully commissioned, live system on a working plant floor

Business Impact

What Laxman's Team Woke Up to on Day 15

Nobody Starts the Chillers Anymore

The system does it. Four chillers now start, stop, and rotate based on logic written into the controller. No person needs to make that call.

One Screen Tells the Whole Story

Chiller status. Running hours. Fault alerts. Laxman sees all four chillers from one place. He no longer walks the floor to find out what is happening.

Shift Change Is Not a Risk Anymore

Before, when an experienced operator went home, the knowledge went with him. Now the logic stays in the controller. It does not take breaks. It does not forget.

Faults Are Visible Before They Become Damage

If something is wrong, the system shows it. The team can act before a small problem becomes a production stoppage.

The Foundation Is Already Built

Energy monitoring, trending, additional equipment integration — all of this can now be added without starting from scratch. The panel and controller are already there.

Deployment Timeline

14 Days. No Surprises. Here Is How It Went

Year	Milestone
Day 1	Panel arrives on site in Chennai. All components inspected before work begins.
Day 2	Panel mounted in position. Field wiring started.
Day 3-4	IO module termination complete. Every field signal mapped and verified.
Day 5	Modbus devices commissioned. EnSmart controller reads live values from the field.
Day 6–7	Controller configured. Modbus to BACnet conversion set up and tested.
Day 8	BACnet link established with all four BACnet-native chiller controllers. Data flowing.
Day 9–10	Chiller sequence logic written and loaded into the BACnet-native chiller controller.
Day 11	Two-way communication verified. Values going up. Commands coming down. Both confirmed.
Day 12	Full system test. All four chillers run together under the new automated sequence.
Day 13	Laxman and the plant team walk through the system. Alarms, monitoring, and operation explained.
Day 14	Commissioning complete. System signed off. Handover done. Chillers running on their own.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which chillers were integrated?

Four chillers inside the Neemak Aluminium plant in Chennai. Each has its own BACnet-native controller. EnSmart connects to all four through a single BACnet communication layer.

What protocol do the field devices use?

Modbus.The EnSmart controller reads these values and converts them to BACnet to communicate with the BACnet-native chiller controllers.

Where exactly is the sequence logic stored?

Directly inside the BACnet-native chiller controller — not in a PC, not in a cloud layer, not in SCADA. Inside the controller itself.

How was 14 days enough for a project like this?

Because everything — panel, controller, IO modules, and gateway — arrived as one complete system. No waiting for parts. No back-and-forth between vendors. One team, one panel, one site.

What did EnSmart supply?

EnSmart DDC controller, IO modules, EnNode gateway, and the control panel — all integrated, all inside one enclosure, directly wired from the field.

Download the Full Case Study

Get the Full Neemak Aluminium Case Study

See how EnSmart helped Neemak Aluminium deliver this project — full methodology, system architecture, and measurable outcomes inside the PDF.

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Some Plants Cannot Afford to Wait for Something to Break

Neemak Aluminium did not wait for a chiller failure to justify automation. Laxman saw the risk — four chillers, manual control, shift-dependent knowledge — and decided to fix it before it became a headline.
EnSmart arrived. Fourteen days later, the chillers were running themselves.
If your plant is still depending on a person to start, stop, or sequence critical cooling equipment — this is what the other side looks like.

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