Patent ID: 8341970

Claim:
An equipment control system comprising: a refrigeration device for cooling a space to be cooled; a control device for controlling a defrosting operation to remove frost adhered to the refrigeration device, the defrosting operation being started at a fixed or varying time interval; a past record data memory unit for storing past record data based on required time for past defrosting operations for different environmental conditions; an environmental condition acquisition unit for obtaining present environmental conditions; a required time prediction unit for estimating, at the time of or before starting a present-round defrosting operation, required time for a present-round defrosting operation based on the past record data corresponding to the present environmental conditions from among the past record data stored in the past record data memory unit; and a start time changing unit for changing start time of the present-round defrosting operation based on the estimated required time obtained at the required time prediction unit from start time that was scheduled based on the time interval, wherein the start time changing unit changes the start time of the present-round defrosting operation from the scheduled start time such that the defrosting operation time period does not overlap with a prohibition time period in which the defrosting operation is prohibited, and the start time changing unit delays the start time of the present-round defrosting operation until after finish time of the prohibition time period when the estimated required time obtained at the required time prediction unit falls below a predetermined amount of time and a temporal difference between the start time of the last defrosting operation and the finish time of the prohibition time period is below a certain value.