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of industrial heat pump systems maintained by Star
industrial heat pump systems designed, installed and maintained by Star
typical reduction in operational costs for customers who use StarCare
For Star Refrigeration, maintenance is not just a necessity but a strategic investment in the future of your business. Our approach to protecting our customers’ most valuable asset can be summed up in one word: StarCare. Encompassing financial security, safety, reliability and efficiency, StarCare is a flexible proactive maintenance and asset management system designed to maximise performance, prolong equipment life, and prevent costly breakdowns.
Whilst scheduled servicing or fixing systems when something goes wrong are important parts of maintenance, StarCare is a comprehensive, next-level approach. It is a customisable, layered system of controls, interventions, and data-driven insights that mitigate and manage risk, optimise energy performance, and ensure the long-term reliability of industrial and district heat pump systems.
Why StarCare?
Going beyond maintenance to provide assurance, StarCare:
- Reduces Business Risk – Prevents failures before they happen with predictive and condition-based monitoring.
- Maximises Asset Value – Extends heat pump life while optimising energy use: saving time, money and carbon.
- Delivers Complete Control – Empowers operators with user-friendly live insights, remote diagnostics, and tailored advice.
- Supports Sustainability Goals – Improves efficiency and reduces CO₂ emissions to help customers hit net zero targets.
Adaptable to the size and requirements of each individual system and business, StarCare turns traditional maintenance on its head. Aftercare is treated with the same strategic importance as the initial capital investment, and every StarCare package puts in place the correct control measures, plans and interventions to ensure the long-term life of the asset.
StarCare keeps the customer informed and empowered, both through user-friendly tools and technology, and straightforward and transparent communication. StarCare customers are never left wondering why they are spending what they are financially or where energy is being consumed. In this way there are no surprises to the customer as StarCare allows the system to operate with financial security, predictability, safety and efficiency.
How StarCare works
StarCare is built around a layered maintenance strategy, tailored to each site and asset, providing combinations of:
Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM)
Scheduled servicing ensures reliability and efficiency, minimising the risk of unplanned downtime. It prevents potential system failures and ensures consistent operation, reducing operational and maintenance costs.
Predictive Maintenance
Data from your system is analysed to anticipate faults before they occur—reducing breakdowns, emissions, and energy waste. Predictive maintenance can also assist with regulatory compliance as it provides a record of system operation.
Condition-Based Monitoring (CBM) & Asset Management
StarCare continually assesses asset health using vibration analysis, thermal imaging, oil sampling, and temperature calibration. These insights allow flexible, responsive maintenance—minimising both costs and disruption.
Remote Monitoring & Alarm Handling
Using Star’s Telstar and Sentinel platforms, our Monitoring Hub captures real-time performance data, allowing engineers to detect and address anomalies remotely before they become serious. This provides reliability and keeps the system as closely as possible in line with its as-commissioned conditions.
Performance Optimisation with Ethos
Star’s Ethos software uses a dynamic digital twin of your plant, to compare its current performance with the ideal. It significantly optimises heat pump performance by identifying inefficiencies and providing targeted recommendations. Ethos guides maintenance teams, schedules and procedures, providing true energy optimisation that can save customers hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Nationwide Expertise with a Local Presence
With 9 branches and over 130 specialist technicians across the UK, Star is set apart by the quality and depth of its reach. All our technicians are trained under a rigorous internal engineering grading and assessment structure, and in addition to providing customers with a local point of contact, benefit from access to the wider group knowledge. Our team is backed by:
- Star Technical Solutions – for expert compliance advice
- Star Data Analytics – for cutting-edge energy management insights
- Star Renewable Energy – for unmatched expertise in heat pump systems
Ready to future proof your business operations?
District Heating
We maintain landmark systems such as Queen’s Quay in Clydebank, the UK’s largest water-source heat pump, and Bunhill 2 Energy Centre in Islington, which reuses heat from the London Underground. These are high-profile, high-impact systems which contribute substantially to local energy security and decarbonisation, tackling fuel poverty and helping the local councils to meet environmental goals in heating homes, businesses and public buildings —and StarCare ensures their long-term reliability.
Industrial Process Heating
From Food & Beverage to Pharma, Agriculture to Manufacturing, Star maintains complex heat pump systems that recover waste heat and optimise utility usage across the production cycle.
Industrial heat pumps have a longer life span (approx. 20+ years) than gas boilers and although they can be cheaper and more straightforward to maintain than other types of heating systems, such as biomass boilers or CHP (Combined Heat & Power), maintaining these assets requires planned care. StarCare protects the value of customers’ investment.
Heat Recovery
Our experts ensure waste heat from heating and cooling systems within manufacturing and other applications is captured and reused efficiently—for example, for CIP, boiler pre-heating or district heating.
Manual servicing and applying StarCare principles to these systems lowers emissions, maximises efficiency and reduces costs for businesses.
Tailored Maintenance Plans for Heat Pump Longevity
Each heat pump is different—and so is each StarCare plan.
Our team assesses your plant’s purpose, performance history, and usage patterns to build a customised maintenance strategy. As the system ages or demand changes, we adapt the plan accordingly—futureproofing your investment.
We understand that maintenance costs matter. That’s why StarCare supports financial planning and forecasting, enabling customers to make informed decisions across the asset lifecycle.
Utility Management Strategies
Implementing approaches such as thermal buffering and load balancing enhances energy efficiency. These strategies ensure that the heat pump system operates optimally under varying load conditions.
In an industrial heat pump system, buffer tanks store the excess heat generated or captured so that it can be used later as needed. This means that energy can be released as demand increases, or absorbed during periods of low demand, stabilising the system’s temperature. By minimising unnecessary heat pump cycles, a thermal buffer optimises the system’s efficiency.
Load balancing distributes the heating or cooling load evenly amongst available heat pumps. This ensures that no single heat pump unit is overworked and prevents unnecessary strain on individual components – again allowing the overall system to operate at peak efficiency.
Energy Management
Tools such as Ethos, Star Refrigeration’s performance optimisation software, monitor and optimise energy usage to provide substantial savings. Ethos sets new standards in sustainable practices by applying the live site data to a ‘dynamic digital twin’ of the heat pump, to measure the gap between the ideal and the actual operating conditions.
This real-time data analysis helps customers make informed decisions to enhance energy efficiency, keeping the heat pump in its optimal state to reduce energy usage and meet environmental goals.
Regulatory Compliance & Technical Support
Star Refrigeration maintains all heat pump systems to the highest industry standards, ensuring optimum efficiency and full compliance with regulatory requirements. We provide technical advice to owners and operators of heat pumps systems to ensure their asset remains safe and legal.
The Star maintenance team benefits from access to the knowledge base and support network of the wider Star Refrigeration group of companies including Star Renewable Energy and Star M&E Solutions. By working closely with our consultants Star Technical Solutions, we provide a specialist service that is unique and unrivalled in the industry. From DSEAR reports and HAZOP analysis, to compliance with regulations related to refrigerant gases and environmental guidelines, we are able to provide customers with expert, up-to-date technical and legislative assistance .
Case Study: Combined Heating and Cooling for Food Manufacturer
- System Size: 958kW heat pump / 1.1MW refrigeration
- StarCare Actions: Weekly checks, remote monitoring (Sentinel & Telstar), Ethos integration, compressor maintenance, and on-site engineer training.
- Results: Reduced energy usage, optimised performance, and full compliance.
Case Study: Water-Source Heat Pump for Agriculture
- System Size: 33MW
- StarCare Actions: Weekly site visits, thermal imaging, vibration analysis, oil sampling, and annual compliance checks.
- Results: Prevented equipment deterioration, reduced operating costs, and ensured accurate system control.