Control Network Newsletter
Continued Support for HVAC Training and Education
As part of our continuing support of HVAC education, Contemporary Controls attended the BEST Center BAS XIII Workshop in Berkeley, California. The topic of the workshop was "From Digital Basics to Advanced BAS for Troubleshooting HVAC Systems: Best Practices for Lab-Based Teaching." Participants attending the conference were instructors representing community colleges from all parts of the United States. Leading the instruction were BEST Center principal investigators Peter Crabtree, Ted Wilinski, and Robert Nirenberg. BEST director Larry Chang introduced Dr. Jingjing Liu, LBNL researcher who spoke on Grid Interactive Efficient Buildings.
Contemporary Controls is a sponsor of the BEST Center, which is engaged in supporting community colleges nationwide in the vocational training of building automation and HVAC students. Many of the colleges at the conference use Contemporary Controls products for their training because our products do not require a license and are available to all without restrictions. Years of field-proven reliability, unlicensed and unrestricted software plus an educational discount make our products perfectly suited for training and education.
To support HVACR programs, Contemporary Controls has worked with several affiliated colleges and technical schools to create an automation classroom/lab experience that mimics the real world. We pride ourselves in customer satisfaction and offer free award-winning US-based technical support on all our products.
Networking and automation equipment in the HVACR classroom/lab has always been important because instructors rely on it to provide experiential evidence for theoretical knowledge. Modern HVACR classrooms use technology to network, control and analyze automation processes and require equipment which is intuitive and easy to use and understand by students. Equipment which is difficult to access or understand will distract students from learning the core concepts and causes students to have less time to focus on experimental work in the lab.
FLEXLAB Advanced Integrated Building & Grid Technologies Testbed
For the first three days, the BEST Center BAS XIII workshop was held at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in the hills over Berkeley. During the conference, participants were given a tour of FLEXLAB®, which is a set of four buildings that allow users to test the energy efficiency of building materials such as windows and insulation in a simulated working environment. One of the buildings is able to rotate on its base so that windows can be exposed to different angles of the sun. The remainder of the workshop was held on the campus of UC Berkeley.
To learn more about our HVAC training and education with Contemporary Controls' networking and control equipment, visit our Education page.