In simple terms, urbanization is the development of towns and cities and the increase of the concentration of populations in these areas. It is undeniably a defining trend of our time. This trend has been seen, and continues to be seen, throughout the developing world. Urbanization can be viewed as a reflection of the economic well-being of a country. As developing countries experience economic growth, there will be continued growth in urbanization. As a city's population grows, so does the demand for goods, services, and infrastructure.

Climate change is arguably the number one issue of our times. Increasing global realization of this, and confrontation of the actions necessary to mitigate it, has already had a substantial impact on the industries Wellington serves, and we expect this trend to continue.  Global electricity demand is outpacing growth of renewable generation. The IEA’s roadmap to net-zero calls for coal-fired electricity generation to fall by 6% a year: in practice, it is expected to increase by 3% in 2022. International Energy Agency, 2021

Wellington’s ECR^® 2 fan motors have many advanced features which enable OEMs to improve cooler performance. In this blog post, we will discuss one of these: timed behaviors. The timed behavior function allows the motor to run in one mode for a period, then change to a different mode, without any change in the control inputs. Creative use of this feature offers many opportunities to enhance and differentiate cooler behavior.

ECR 2 fan motors achieve simple on-off control by removing power from the brown (phase) wire. Alternatively, they are configurable for three “speed” settings, these are selected by connecting the black (control) wire to phase, to neutral, or not connecting it.

For any given connection position of the black wire (i.e. to phase, neutral, or nothing), the motor behavior can be configured so:

Having determined the energy requirements for Connect Monitor, the next step was to select the battery chemistry and construction. There are many, many different types of non-rechargeable battery available nowadays, each of which has their own pros and cons: it’s easy to get it wrong if you don’t carefully think through all the requirements. In our case, we wanted: 

Over our next two articles introducing the Connect Monitor, David Howell, Wellington's Chief Technical Officer tells us about the real-world design considerations for the Connect Monitor's battery, starting off with the energy budget.

As the labour cost of replacing a low-cost IoT device is significantly higher than the price of the device itself; the battery must deliver the longest possible life while also producing the best possible device performance under real-world conditions.