Chattanooga company builds brains behind tomorrow`s

Start-Up
BY ELLIS SMITH
ENERGY
Enerfit manufactures technology designed to be attached to existing air conditioners and forces them to perform more efficiently. President/
founder Ron Patch, right, and Vice President Ben Patch pose for a photograph at Enerfit headquarters on South Creek Road in Chattanooga.
Chattanooga company builds brains
behind tomorrow’s smart air-conditioning
E
nerfit, a Chattanooga company that works to reduce
energy usage on commercial air-conditioning units,
has launched a second version of its patented product,
which workers affix to existing cooling units, big or small.
Large commercial air-conditioning units typically have
two settings: full blast or off. Enerfit adds a number of options to save energy when the full-power option isn’t needed,
and grants customers mobile control over an entire series of
units, if they so desire.
The second version of Enerfit’s retrofit unit is smaller and
smarter than the company’s first offering and includes features
that prevent maintenance workers, who may not be familiar
with the product, from inadvertently disconnecting the unit in
the course of doing regular checks on a building’s A/C.
“Nobody’s ever tried to make these guys’ lives easy,” says
Ben Patch, son of company founder Ron Patch.
Sure, Enerfit adds features that wouldn’t be expensive for
air-conditioning manufacturers to do on their own, Patch acknowledges. But there’s a certain inertia in the air-conditioning world, in which manufacturers produce and consumers
expect products that emphasize price rather than features.
“It’s just the nature of the beast,” Patch says. “They just
don’t have the incentive. When your margins are that low, your
R&D budget just disappears and you’re mass producing. The
closer you can make it to last year’s model, the better.”
Patch says that not only does his unit save 50 percent on
heating, ventilation and air-conditioning costs, but attaching his smart box to the side of a A/C unit also can extend
its life. The company is targeting supermarkets, which use
air-conditioners to both keep the grocery store cool and also
to cool food.
“It’s racks and racks of compressors,” Patch says. “That’s
where you get the big savings.”
Though Enerfit performs a different function than
Google’s popular Nest Thermostat, some of the same principles apply. Nest, for example, can shut off a compressor to
save energy while continuing to run the fan, using residual
cooling to chill a home. Using similar tricks, Enerfit can
multiply a company’s savings across hundreds of thousands
of square feet, Patch said.
Enerfit also controls humidity, which plays a big role in commercial temperature control, Patch said. By reducing humidity,
it also reduces the need for air-conditioners to enter “defrost
mode,” which is the most power-intensive feature on any unit.
“If you can reduce the amount of time it stays in defrost
mode, you can reduce much of the energy usage for the big
dogs,” he says.
Enerfit has accumulated hundreds of customers in more
than 35 states and has grown to 30 workers. The company
will have to work hard to stave off competitors as corporate
clients embrace energy efficiency. But Enerfit, having begun
its work on commercial air-conditioning in 2010, is light
years ahead in terms of research and lessons learned, Patch
believes.
“Nobody else is even playing in this league,” Patch says.
“Want to know what we’ve been doing since 2010? This.”
Photography by Logan Foll
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EDG E • DECEMBER 2014