By Eamonn Ryan

CAREL, on 2 December 2025, hosted a live webinar on the topic ‘How STone Virtual Loop can streamline the developers working life in the HVAC/R industry’ presented by Matteo Galenda, CAREL application specialist HVAC residential group solution marketing, and Simone Armano, CAREL SSD HVAC and food retail manager – digital department. This is part three of a three-part series.

Part of the presentation.

Part of the presentation. © RACA Journal

…continued from part two.

CAREL trialled the tool internally while developing its own residential heat pump logic. The results showed:

  • 20% reduction in development cost
  • 20% faster time-to-market
  • Significantly fewer laboratory hours required
  • Lower iteration count on prototypes
  • These savings recur every year across the entire unit portfolio, not just on new models.

Why this matters for the HVAC/R industry

The HVAC/R industry faces:

  • A shortage of thermodynamics specialists
  • Increasingly complex control strategies
  • Tight regulatory and cybersecurity requirements
  • Pressure for rapid electrification (for example, heat pumps)
  • High costs of laboratory testing
  • Growing demand for remote diagnostics

STone Virtual Loop addresses all of these by enabling a model-based development process – a digital approach already common in automotive and aerospace engineering but still emerging in HVAC/R.

Future enhancements, including generative AI assistance, will automate code generation, diagnostics, HMI translations and troubleshooting – bringing HVAC software development closer to the DevOps paradigms of mainstream software engineering.

 

Conclusion

STone Virtual Loop represents a major step forward for HVAC/R control development. By enabling virtualised testing, early failure prediction, automated validation and secure workflows, it allows manufacturers to deliver more reliable equipment at lower cost and in shorter timeframes. It is especially valuable for organisations integrating new developers or scaling their software portfolios across multiple product lines.

While it does not replace laboratory performance testing, it substantially reduces dependence on physical prototypes and creates a more agile, modern development environment. As HVAC/R systems become more digital, connected and intelligent, tools like STone Virtual Loop are set to become indispensable across the industry.

 

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