Remote laboratories allow students and trainees to fully access experiments while providing the necessary guidance and constraining operation to avoid dangerous situations. In this paper a remote laboratory for monitoring and controlling a typical mechanical refrigeration system is presented. A client-server communication is used to connect a local PC with the remote laboratory, and an ad-hoc, LabVIEW-based user interface allows to monitor and control the plant. The laboratory can be used as an experimental aid in the teaching of controller design for refrigeration systems. Examples ranging from open-loop to closed-loop tests on a typical vapour compression cycle refrigeration system are reported. (C) 2015, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.