Recently, we had a K-12 school district customer tell us just that. What in the world does this mean? In a school district with more than 2,000 NetX Wi-Fi thermostats deployed, the facility manager explained that they no longer had to worry about mass failures, as they do with their other campuses that are running BAS systems.
He explained that the BAS systems were “daisy-chained” room controllers, with one or more central controllers at a location, typically divided into the wings, floors, or hallways of the school, and room controllers (a.k.a. thermostats) controlled the individual rooftop units (RTUs). Over time, not only did the room controllers have occasional issues, but the central controllers would also have issues, or the daisy chain cabling would have issues. Pretty standard complaints about BAS systems as they age.
So what does this have to do with NetX eliminating “catastrophic system failures”?
When a central controller fails or a wire becomes loose in the daisy chain or is chewed by a rat (true story), the school would typically lose an entire wing, floor, or hallway of the HVAC system. This system failure always leaves the HVAC/Maintenance staff scrambling to find the source of the failure, while teachers, students, and staff register complaints. If you're in the school facilities world for any length of time, we’re pretty sure you've felt the pain and have been part of the scramble.
With the NetX Wi-Fi solution, “catastrophic failures” like this don't happen because there is no central controller (single point of failure) or daisy chain cabling to go bad. Even if a thermostat fails (lightning strike, basketball, etc.), it only affects a single RTU system not an entire wing, floor, or hallway.
And, if there is a network issue, the NetX thermostats never miss a beat because all settings, including schedules, are stored internally in each NetX thermostat. Even without network connectivity, each NetX thermostat will continue to operate the HVAC system during regular school days or any other scheduled special or calendar events without issue.
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