Variable-frequency drive

I mean, that was invaluable experience because again, I'll make the sound bad, but to take a, all one vendor solution that's easy to integrate right they should already have the tools and the hooks and the you know it's taken a solution of four different major component areas and they're all from a different vendor that's a challenge sometimes and but that's what gets you good at integration it's like because you're not always going to have that single vendor thing you're going to have hey we standardized on this for our plc's but our hmis are this or our servo controls are this and you got to now integrate those i mean i have a common one.

It's, you know, they, they have a different VFD that they, that they standardized than their PLC.

We all know nowadays, if you buy your VFD from your PLC guy, it's kind of nicely integrated, right? Yeah.

But you know, you have to be able to, that's where true integration comes in is how do I make these unlike products talk together? Absolutely.

I think what the, as I progressed in my career, that, that became frustrating to me a little bit.

That's just the way companies were built, right? You don't necessarily have to say it that way, but that's kind of the gist of it, right? It's just nature of the beast.

And if you do it the right way, it all fixes itself.

If you don't extend somebody beyond what their capabilities are, You're going to have a higher success or higher success rate, right? If you just send somebody out that knows, uh, you know, VFDs and motor starters and all, you send them out for a vision application.

Dragos reported that CommaSight conducted sustained reconnaissance of exposed US industrial devices between March and July of 2025.

The group scanned HMIs, VFDs, meters, and cellular gateways in sequence, essentially mapping how parts of the control loop fit together.

Think about that for a second.

They weren't just looking for one vulnerable box.

Now, what has changed a bit is the modern electrician, you just have to have a greater level of tech savvy.

We can think about things like programming VFDs and having to get out an instruction manual or download instructions and read them to something as simple as replacing an LED driver.

You know, years ago we would replace a ballast in a fluorescent light fixture and it was six wire nuts and one screw, right? And now when we put those LED drivers in, some of those we have to program.

And so you have to hook your phone up or Bluetooth into it.

I used to do the same thing.

So adding VFDs to compressors, digital compressors, putting drives on condenser fans, low condensing, floating suction, all light optimization.

I've done all that stuff, but it comes back to the numbers.

We would always have to go and get M&V, measurement and verification, and then test it against this, and then you go to another customer and they wanna do the same thing all over again, but we just proved it with this customer that you'd have to do it all over again.