Now that your building has invested in an advanced rooftop control system, you are just at the beginning of the journey for sustainability and improved comfort and control. However, most building managers and owners stop here and only take advantage of 50% of the savings through advanced rooftop controls, which include controlling your rooftop unit fan speed, demand control ventilation, and more.

But how you use this system moving forward when the building is occupied or not, as well as how to control humidity, are the big advantages that we want to make sure you get the full value of your investment – whether you paid for it yourself or out of the very generous utility rebates that often cover a good portion of the cost. Either way – we are only about halfway up the journey to the mountaintop together. Let’s begin.

What has been installed in my new system?

There are 3 major components that have been installed in your advanced rooftop control system.

Gateway – which gets us the system to the internet so you can view on your phone or computer

PEARL Advanced Rooftop Controller– allows control and communication of your economizer. Often we replace the actuators at this time, which give the direction to the economizer to open or close.

Thermostat with CO2 sensor – often with included humidity sensor

Programming a Schedule?

Programming a schedule is the single most important thing to do for both comfort and savings in this new system. However, most customers don’t take on this important task. It is important for two reasons. First, it allows the system to keep operating as you want if you lose internet or connection to the individual unit. Secondly, it gives you the power to set the set points, not the individual tenant or user of the space at any one moment. We have seen countless examples of someone that shows up to work hot, lowers the temperature to 65 degrees, and then forgets about it. Or the opposite – they turn up the heat because the system is not working as they think it should, and go home for the weekend without returning it to a reasonable set point.

Whether you lock the thermostats or leave them unlocked for others to adjust – both require a schedule for best practices. If you are going to leave them locked, so others cannot adjust, then we recommend an “optimum start” temperature for when the building starts being used – which means the system thinks ahead to make sure the temperature is correct when you open based on historical data of your system, your set back, as well as the current weather. If you leave it unlocked, then we recommend frequent resets to the temperature you desire every few hours throughout the day. This way, if someone makes a change, it will reset in a few hours to the ideal set point and give them control.

We always recommend leaving the system to auto, instead of heating only or cooling only. We recommend a cooling set point of 74 degrees, to maximize efficiency. We will also discuss a bit more removing humidity from systems, which is easier in the 70 degree range vs the 60s. We always recommend a difference between heating and cooling set points of 5 degrees or more, and we will explain more about why that is. These are all our recommendations, based on hundreds of commercial advanced rooftop control projects. However, ultimately this is your space and your decision to make – we are just your humble advisors.

Optimum Start

Optimum start is an important feature that our customers often overlook. If you open at 9am, you can schedule the system to start at 9am and it will optimize to make sure the set point is reached by the correct time. Often our customers will plan on 8am or earlier to make sure, wasting energy in the process. Let the system work for you and do the math so you can focus on other priorities.

What are the Ideal Set Back Temperatures?

There are no perfect answers to this question – only that you do set back. Setting back has a lot of advantages – mostly that it can allow your system to relax for a few hours and take a rest. But, in terms of efficiency – early morning hours are the coolest of the day, and often this is when we see the most “free cooling” by opening the economizer to bring in fresh cool air instead of running the compressor. So a set back allows this most frequently to be maximized in our climate, especially in spring and fall.

We recommend a set back to 80 degrees for cooling (at least), and 60 degrees for heating. The important consideration for heating is that you do not put a risk of pipes freezing when you are not occupied, but going back as far as you can confidently at night in the winter. It is important to remember – exterior walls that may hold water lines can be colder than your set point.

Humidity Settings

Humidity is a big challenge in general, and no summer has been more difficult than the summer of 2026 in Illinois for controlling humidity. Some HVAC systems have advanced dehumificiations settings in their systems, which allows the Air Conditioning system to do more than just passively reduce humidity – it can actively do this through advanced featrues. Pelcian system can control these advanced featrues, although they are rare.

If your system is a traditional system, we recommend controlling humidity by using the “cool only” feature on the humidity settings. This allows the system to run more to remove humidity, cooling up to 4 degrees more than you have set. This can be confusing, and not programmed correctly can add to issues. This is why we recommend 74 degrees – your system in this setting can go to 70 degrees to remove humidity.

To engage humidity controls, you go to admin on the main page or upper right drop down on the system. Once you select “cool only” in your system for humidity controls, this will instruct the system to monitor and manage humidity as best as your system can do. We don’t recommend setting the safe range under control mode, as this only sends you nuisance alarms when it is outside that range. We do recommend the “fixed enthalpy limit” to be yes – this is a fancy way of saying it will not free cool if it is super humid outside.

Now that the system is working to lower humidity, we recommend on the main page to set the maximum humidity to 70%. You can go lower, but it will start to waste energy and not likely be realistic in our climate on most systems.

If your temperature is set to 74 degrees and max of 70% humidity, your system may drop to 73 or 72 when it is above 70% humidity. This will keep lowering humidity, within reason. The more your doors open, or outside air keeps entering, the more the system will work and struggle to accomplish this goal.

What Minimum Damper Positions Should I Set on My Economizer?

Part of the amazing savings of this system is that while normally you must always have fresh air and your dampers open wiht commercial systems. However, as we are measuring CO2, we can keep these dampers closed and save energy on our systems. The system will open and close when the CO2 levels rise about 800.

The one caveat is for restaurants – those have so much air leaving, that they need some air to come in to balance the store. We have playbooks for those to “balance’ the stores, but each is unique and we will set those up to start.

What Should I Do If I’m Having Issues?

Reach out to me or one of your favorite Verde folks.  Or fill out this form, and we’ll set up some time to chat. In 15 years of doing business, we’ve never walked away from a customer. So we are here to help, but the best practice is that your team learns and has better control over this free software solution to help you reduce your energy costs and reduce maintenance costs. A compressor not run doesn’t just save energy – it extends the life of that asset.

You never know unless you try – and we always enjoy hearing from you.  Verde believes in being a partner for the life of your building – re-evaluating as the technology (and incentives change).  We also have built our company on referrals, and are always grateful for a new opportunity to work with someone like you.