ControlTrends, hosted by industry experts Ken Smyers and Eric Stromquist, invited PassiveLogic’s CEO Troy Harvey to interview on their show on September 28.

Eric and Ken described PassiveLogic at the beginning of the show as “the atom bomb of the industry, it could change everything.”

Highlights from ControlTalk NOW. Troy discusses what the future of Autonomous Buildings will look like.

Troy amazed the hosts by walking them through PassiveLogic’s autonomous buildings paradigm shift, which is enabling buildings to become truly “smart.” While the obvious benefit is that smart buildings are more energy efficient than conventional buildings, there are broader implications to society for introducing this technology as well.

“I’m kind of spellbound here” — Ken Smyers

The episode was an opportunity for these industry veterans to tackle important issues such as decreasing barriers to advanced technology and creating peer-to-peer democratized energy networks.

Eric and Ken asked Troy: “We have a bunch of barriers. As you called them, the ‘senior citizens’ in our industry have a very strong hold on the channels to the contractors through the distributors and to the OEMs, and to the business building owners… but I think the big question here is how does PassiveLogic see itself going to market?”

Troy’s response illuminated a shift in industry thinking: “We recognized early on at PassiveLogic that while this is pretty disruptive technology, we should use the technology to address the pain points of the installer because they’re the one who’s often making the decisions, especially in the design-build market, which is fundamentally way bigger than the plan-spec market in terms of number of commercial units out there.” PassiveLogic’s paradigm shift creates a platform that simplifies and works for installers rather than requiring more from them. This is in stark contrast to other bolt-on technologies that add layers of complexity and ultimately limit access to building controls and automation.

The trio take a look at the impact PassiveLogic’s Deep Digital Twin has on the building life cycle

Ken and Eric were particularly impressed with how PassiveLogic addresses the labor shortage. Ken notes, “For a lot of reasons we might be our own worst enemy in bringing new people into our world because of … the impression you make on young people where they come into … these facilities” and the technology is not “cool, clever, smart” and keeps us from “attracting the most intelligent people that are available.”

Troy describes the labor problem and solution vividly: “There’s an underlying happiness quotient that I think is part of the challenge we see in our industry. What we’re being asked to do is fundamentally not possible with the technology we have, which leads to a lot of dissatisfaction. As an automation engineer you’re constantly being yelled at and told how you did it wrong. You could go to Apple instead and make an app and everybody’s going to high five you. So we have this problem. We need to realign the industry and make it so that, ‘Hey, every day I go to work, I’m working with the world’s coolest technology.’ And that [expectation] makes sense because it’s the world’s biggest control space.”

Ken Smyers (top left), Eric Stromquist (top right), and Troy Harvey (bottom) discuss the implications of emerging building controls technology

“That’s what ControlTrends is all about, finding the trendsetters and trending innovation and technology. I think we’ve just come into another realization that there’s something really hot … here that is going to make an impact in our industry quickly.” — Ken Smyers

Eric, Ken, and Troy found so much to discuss that the conversation didn’t fit into one episode. Troy has been invited to appear on ControlTalk again to continue this exciting conversation.

“I was so impressed what an amazing concept with an amazing intelligent person that really understands our industry as well as what we do.” — Ken Smyers

See the whole episode on ControlTrends.

PassiveLogic is developing the the first fully autonomous platform for buildings, built on digital twins from the ground up.