14. Furnace Fan Motor Technology Assessment

Understanding the barriers associated with the lack of adoption of energy efficient technologies in the residential sector has always been an area of major focus. In order to encourage the adoption of these technologies, it is important to first understand what is currently needed, what the current status to meeting these needs are, and then determining the gaps between the current status and needs. These gaps can be used to determine what is possibly restricting the adoption of the technology, and solutions can be determined that can potentially close these gaps. One such energy efficient technology that has been an area of focus is energy efficient furnace fan motors. This study looks at the current technical, organizational, and personal gaps associated with this technology and determines the positive and negative influences restricting adoption. Solutions to the gaps are then identified and are specified as guides to help change negative influences to positive influences. The second section of this study is a bibliometric analysis used to evaluate the current R&D status of the three main technologies currently available in the market. Both journal articles and patents are associated with the respective stages of R&D to determine the specialization of different countries with respect to the technology and to determine the progress over time of the technology in each of the first three R&D stages. The purpose of this study is therefore to evaluate the technology from the R&D perspective as well as the market perspective. Finally, a link between the current R&D status and the technical requirements of the market is identified.