Scheduled thermal control system

Refrigeration management includes determining an optimal operational schedule to control a refrigeration system for a cold storage facility. Various approaches can be used to determine an operational schedule with an optimal operational outcome that satisfies constraints representative of a range of factors, such as thermal characteristics of a refrigeration management system, energy cost, and environmental factors external to the system, which can affect refrigeration management of a cold storage facility. The method characterised by determining a thermal model of the enclosure and the refrigeration system by analyzing timestamped temperature measurements from a plurality of sensors within the enclosure; obtaining an energy cost model for a predetermined period of future time; obtaining an environmental model for the predetermined period of future time; generating a plurality of candidate schedules based on the thermal model, the energy cost model, and the environmental model, for controlling the refrigeration system for the predetermined period of future time; generating a multi-dimensional graph providing costs for cooling the enclosure according to the plurality of candidate schedules, wherein each of the costs represent a combination of an energy cost and an energy consumption according to each of the plurality of candidate schedules; randomly selecting a seed schedule from the plurality of candidate schedules; evaluating the seed schedule in the multi-dimensional graph using an iterative optimization algorithm; and selecting the operational schedule that provides an optimal cost from among the plurality of candidate schedules; and controlling the refrigeration system over the predetermined period of future time according to the determined operational schedule.