Abstract: Embodiments disclosed herein include a method of developing a reduced order model (ROM) for a model based controller. In an embodiment, the method comprises obtaining a design of a plant, and building a detailed model of the thermal network of the plant from the design of the plant. In an embodiment, the method further comprises obtaining a training input recipe, and running the detailed model using the training input recipe. In an embodiment, the method further comprises generating a plurality of snapshots, wherein each snapshot includes the temperatures of a plurality of components in the detailed model, and utilizing a dynamic mode decomposition with control (DMDc) operation in order to extract the ROM from the plurality of snapshots.