Heating, ventilating, and air conditioning – also known as HVAC – are systems that require control systems to make them function properly. A typical household furnace & air conditioning system relies on a thermostat to determine how long the furnace runs or how many stages of cooling are required to meet the temperature setpoint.
A typical residential thermostat might also control whether the furnace fan operates intermittently or continuously. Night setback scheduling is another feature provided by some programmable residential thermostats. While it may be simple within your home, control systems for commercial buildings are far more complex. As the size and complexity of commercial HVAC systems increase, the control systems must also increase in complexity.
Regardless of how complex a control system is, there are four necessary aspects of a control system; control setpoints, control sensor inputs, a comparison device, and control system outputs.
