Welcome to Modern Agriculture!
The Fan Commander is your thermostat on steroids! It uses the wind, average and real temperature to decide when you want your fans to operate. You save electric by having it turn the fans off when its windy outside the barn. Your cows are more comfortable because it runs the fans more during extra hot weather.
Saving electric is easy, you simply mount the included wind wheel outside and set the wind threshold. Now, your fans will turn off when Mother Nature is providing adequate ventilation. . Your fans run less. You save.
How does it make my cows more comfortable? The controller does it by keeping track of the average temperature. We make it do the average temperature because when cows heat up, they don’t cool down right away. So we make it look at how hot is was in the last 18 hours. If it averaged at least 85° F, the controller tricks the fans, into thinking they need to run more. It does this by adding 6° towards how soon the fans starts. This means if it has been really warm, your fans start at cooler temperatures. Also if its has been really hot day and it suddenly cools down, your fans will stay on longer. While we believe an 18 hour average of 85° should add 6°, we might not be right. You may find that your barn and cows need better settings. You can change them easily at any time with the controller’s screen.
How do I connect this to my fans? How does it know how what fans I have? We have 2 versions of this controller. The Standard version connects to regular fan contactors. The Varaible speed version controls HVLS fans or any fan with a VFD.
The Standard version FCT-0300has 3 stages . You can control and connect 3 banks of fans. The controller handles these 3 banks individually by having 3 seperate control relays.
The Variable Speed version FCV-1000 has a variable voltage output(0-10v). This is designed to connect to Variable Frequency drives, which are commonly used on HVLS fans. You can connect at least 8 fans to this one control signal.
Other features of the FCV-1000 :