Albany for many years was home to the Upstate New York’s largest All Electric Building.🔌

One Commerce Plaza was an all electric building until 2006, they used reversing valves on the air conditioning units to provide heat. But the system had one costly flaw — they had to use electric resistant heaters to bring the air temperature to above 40 degrees on cold days, which made the building very costly to operate in prolonged cold spells winter.

Now, One Commerce Plaza uses gas pre-heaters, but they don’t heat the building to 72 degrees. Instead, the rather small gas heater brings the outside air to around 45 degrees, then air conditioner units with their reversing valves, compress the heat from “warmed up air” to a comfortable 72 degrees for the offices.