Sensing an opportunity

After reading Howard McKew’s “Tomorrow’s Engineer” column in Engineered Systems magazine about the building industry providing more leadership of the green initiative (“Green Initiative and More On Leadership,” October 2007, page 94), I thought you might find G.E. Sensing’s new CO2-based ventilation control in educational facilities webpage useful (www.gesensing.com/market/education.htm).



Many schools across the U.S. are using CO2control for the risk reduction and energy savings. In fact, we have identified schools as one of the fastest growing applications for CO2strategies. The reason for this is that the benefits closely align with the issues facing school systems ... conserving energy, reducing risk, improving student performance, etc.

Being the leading manufacturer of CO2sensors, it is our job to expand the market. The reason we created our webpage was to aid the controls companies, many of who are our customers, in selling CO2-based ventilation control as a part of their overall system.

Other resources we found on CO2control were targeted toward engineers and weighted down with technical jargon, etc. So, we saw a need for a clear, easy-to-understand explanation of CO2control’s benefits because few people understand all of them. Information like our white paper can be given to school officials to raise awareness for this control strategy.

As the need for better energy efficiency grows, the use of CO2-based ventilation control strategies will continue growing and will open up additional opportunities in new and retrofit buildings for limited control systems like you those mentioned in your message. For instance, there are tens of thousands of installed portable classrooms in need of ventilation control and improved energy efficiency. While GE Sensing will not be manufacturing or selling the control system for these applications, our CO2sensors will play a vital role in the energy payback calculations for our customers’ systems.

John Welch
GE Sensing
Sales Engineer
Telaire Products
Sparta, TN

McKew replies:

I have been seeing more and more CO2strategies being used in school projects, as well as in other projects to reduce energy while maintaining good ventilation. The problem I see with systems such as yours and others is the control companies come in with their own CO2controls as part of their central control system, and as a result, individual CO2systems struggle to compete because you are providing limited controls when looking at the entire building system.

I don’t know if you have experienced this issue when competing. I think on energy retro-commissioning jobs, an “add-on” CO2system without the large control company participation may be the best spot to market this system.