We formed Zero3 Controls after two decades of building the industry's leading refrigeration controls in supermarkets throughout the world. Our team is made up of industry veterans, with deep experience in refrigeration controller programming, controller maintenance, controller installation, and web solution development.

Our Business Model

Zero3 Controls, together with ACIWebs.com, offer the XLT and a hosted solution for monitoring your entire chain of stores.

  • Zero3 and ACIWebs do not wish to become a monitoring company, a controls manufacturer, or a refrigeration service group. Our single goal is to function as a conduit for high speed access and a common communication platform to refrigeration sites around the country, and eventually around the world.


  • Our business model is simply to sell the XLT itself, and to provide the underlying Central server system for communications. We are willing, and actually eager, to work with others in building many value added applications on top of this platform.


  • When it comes to competing OEM’s using the XLT system, we fully intend to be aggressively neutral. This is the ONLY way we can provide full service to our core concepts.

Our Goal

Our goal is simple: we want to save you money. We install a universal translator that simultaneously gives you web access to everything happening in your store's environment, while also enabling you to economically replace controllers that have reached their end of life.

  • Supermarkets want the latest technology. Each and every energy or monitoring manager wants the latest wrinkle, the most productive algorithm, etc. His only problem is paying for it, budgeting it, and justifying it. (Those aren’t all the same thing)


  • No Supermarket wants to be captive. No-one wants to be ‘locked in’ to a specific system in such a way that they have no choice about what equipment they use, when they have to budget it, etc.


  • When new sites or equipment are added, no one wants to have to learn a whole new way of doing things.


  • When new equipment is planned, no one wants to have to leave older stores by the wayside, sometimes for years, while everything is upgraded.


  • When new equipment is used, the energy/monitoring manager expects the inherent system to make his life easier and/or cheaper, not to require more effort or cost more.

Why Work with Zero3 and the XLT?

Supermarkets consume an incredible amount of the total generated power in our country. But modern control optimization allows for tremendous energy savings, without sacrificing food quality or safety. Until now, there hasn't been an easy way to monitor and fine-tune a supermarket's cases and power management. But the XLT is changing all of that. One univeral interface, through a website, gives you apples-to-apples comparisons, real-time monitoring and hides the proprietary communication requirements, while taking advantage of the modern capabilities already built into your existing controlers.

  • Most customers will never change out ALL their sites to a particular brand of controller. Most customers have a collection of Legacy equipment. Some of it works well, and isn’t in imminent danger of being obsolete. Some of it is no longer serviceable, for good reasons. Some of it was modern stuff, bought in an attempt to determine whose equipment provided the best service. The sales arena for controller manufacturers is really in the second area, and sometimes in the third. The XLT offers the customer the opportunity to bring all the equipment he has spread around into one common, highly usable network, and allow him to plan the replacement/upgrading of his obsolescent in a reasonable and affordable way.


  • No-One wants to relearn. No-one wants to go from one comprehensive system to another, even if the services level is the same or slightly better. The learning curves are too steep in today's labor environment to make that step. If the ‘New’ system doesn’t offer as much, they certainly don’t want to go there.


  • No controller manufacturer wants to become just a commodity.The modern controller offers a host of features previously unavailable. Even in a comprehensive communications system, there are ways of advertising and expressing the differences, without destroying or degrading the common approach needed to make the XLT concepts workable. The XLT now puts a small note on the bottom of the screen saying ‘ComTrol’ or ‘Danfoss’. That could easily be changed to a more visible logo, and clicking on this logo could lead to a couple of web pages extolling the virtues and features of the modern device, and/or a help screen oriented to that device. Zero3 would prefer to work with the Controller Mfr, and let them structure their own screens in this area.


  • The critical difference will be either cooperation or challenge. The XLT screen operations are just the tip of the iceberg. The XLT Expert system, the Query Engine, the Energy Manager, and the Global Change Manager will be the elements of this design that make customers want to buy in to the XLT. The screen pictures are pretty, but the others offer the possibility of real savings for both the customer and the OEM doing the monitoring. The tide in the supermarket industry is running toward services and management. That is going to eventually require an approach like the XLT. The recurring revenue stream from this management operation will inevitably supplant controller sales as a smart companies mission.


  • The key ingredient in cooperation will be working together for a common goal, not dominance by one party. For instance, it is entirely possible for future models of controllers to contain the XLT protocol, without detracting from their own superior aspects. Zero3 will be happy to share this technology with our partners, for free. We can collect our revenue when the customer decides to sign on to the larger network, if the OEM wishes. There is no question there are other workable ways we can cooperate, also.