Doing our best to ensure we make buildings more economical for the owners and far more functional for occupiers seems to have paved a way to a plethora of control devices and systems being developed, in turn leading the way to many green and wellbeing goals being achieved.
Lighting controls extend their effectiveness within the workplace way beyond simple detection and dimming; they can balance the intensity of the levels of the lighting throughout the day, change the spectrum of light through the day, control scenes, zone areas to increase wellness.
With wellbeing the key to a successful workplace, both the daytime and nighttime economies need to be considered, with this in mind the setting of lighting levels and colour temperatures is of paramount importance and should be carefully delivered in line with the tasks being carried out.
Lighting controls are mostly considered when new lighting is installed or when there has been a focus on necessary energy savings by replacing old inefficient lighting with new LED products. The enthusiasm for lighting refurbishment is sometimes dampened when the cost and the upheaval associated with ripping out old lighting seems to outweigh the benefits. One way to do this and keep costs low while encouraging circular economy principles could be to retrofit a new LED light source into an existing luminaire, this approach saves waste and is far more environmentally friendly. The addition of a lighting control device within the luminaire could transform the new lighting into a sophisticated and very effective control system that has huge potential to save future energy bills. This approach avoids costly re-wiring, labour costs of removing old fittings and reinstalling new fittings with the associated hassle for the occupants.
When considering new products with a level of controllability, choosing products that are manufactured with built in integral control devices delivers a far more efficient and reliable control system that is far quicker to install.
Whether it be Net Zero targets, general sustainability or using technology to ensure energy usage goals are achieved, a lighting controls system will be aiding the time scales these are achieved in whilst installing a backbone for future savings and benefits.
Adapting to new standards and practices is not new, however with a greater focus now on monitoring and recording data there are systems that are poised to assist with this.
Whether it be energy recording information, Emergency test results, maintenance information or movement detection heat maps, modern control systems make this data more easily available. With building floor plans as a background image , the information on GUI’s are much easier to read and ultimately make the process of accessing the data more efficient.
