Onkar Phatak

Our industry has traditionally relied heavily on fossil fuels, including natural gas, to provide heating and hot water for commercial buildings. It is not unusual to go into a large commercial building (those with a gross area of more than 300,000 square feet) and find natural gas boilers that provide heating in a closed-loop hydronic system. A typical alternative to gas-fired boilers is the use of electric reheat coils.

The way we control the speed of fan motors or pump motors has tremendously changed in the past two decades with the introduction of variable-frequency drives (VFDs), aka variable-frequency controllers (VFCs). In the distant past, convincing an owner or a contractor to have VFDs control fan and pump motors required a detailed return-on-investment analysis.