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After another frightfully long car ride (20 hours to be exact), we all need a bit of a break from the car. So, we are going into tourist mode as we approach Orange County, CA. From touring Hollywood homes to lounging at the beach, a few days of R&R sound nice right about now.
When we are fully recovered from our travels, we are ready to visit Scot Duncan, president and founder of Conservant Systems. He is also the inventor of the Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Energy (DoE) and California Energy Commission-award-winning High Efficiency Dehumidification System (HEDS). Pardon us while we go full out fanboy here. Duncan has been a leader in the BAS industry for over 40 years, specializing in relative humidity control/thermal energy storage and energy efficiency.
Described by Conservant as a “hands-on” engineer (rather than a “desk engineer”), Duncan began his career at Honeywell Delta 2000, where his father worked as an engineer, at the ripe old age of 12.
What can a twelve-year-old do for an engineering company, you may be wondering. On the experience and the early use of computers for HVAC, Duncan told Medium,
“They were very slow and very primitive, and they needed to have operators at the main control panel and also out in the field when they were checking out the equipment.
Honeywell brought me in to sit at the operator’s consul and listen to the radio and do what I was told—essentially punching buttons and telling them what I saw.
They told me it was a choice between me and a trained monkey, but I was much more cost-effective because I did not need diaper changes as often as the monkey did so that made me less expensive! I was getting paid $0.50 per hour (cash!) and they later told me I was overpaid!”
Over the years as he worked his way up in the company, he developed a knack for dealing with problems created by designers who lacked field experience. By 18 he was a fully vested engineer at the company; ten years later he started his own consulting engineering firm.
His laundry list of awards and accomplishments is quite long, including his inventions of the Load Based Optimization System (LOBOS) & High Efficiency Dehumidification System (HEDS). LOBOS is a software designed to provide intelligent HVAC control which addresses both the chiller plant and the air handling side to create energy savings and greater capacity. It is this dynamic balance that makes LOBOS unique.
The standard way to control relative humidity is to sub-cool then reheat the air to get out as much moisture as possible. However, according to the US Army Corps of Engineers, HEDS is needed at many federal facilities that are not equipped with the needed reheat function, which can lead to mold growth. HEDS is an energy recovery dehumidification method designed to be more cost effective and efficient.
We could go on and on about Scot Duncan’s contributions to the field but suffice it to say that we are big fans and have thoroughly enjoyed learning more about his innovations in BAS. With that, it is time to move on. Pass out the Mandarin oranges (in honor of our visit to Orange, obviously) and pull up “We would have some cute kids” by Tai Verdes on the playlist. Our next stop will be Stanford, California!
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References:
https://academicinfluence.com/people
https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/#innovators
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/future-tech-awards-2021-future-50
https://www.conservantsystems.com/bio
https://usace.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p266001coll1/id/8205/
