Let’s Talk Lighting Controls.

In a world where everyone is trying to go green and reduce the amount of light pollution, lighting manufacturers are responding in a very positive way and a lot of lighting controls are being innovated to bring businesses in [city] more control than ever when it comes to lighting up a building inside and out. Some controls are more basic where others are more sophisticated, depending on the scale of your lighting needs. Lighting companies know that not every light needs to be on at all times, and are responding by providing a vast number of lighting control solutions.  Here are just a few commercial lighting control solutions:

• Timers
• Dimmers
• Occupancy/Vacancy Sensors
• Daylighting Sensors
• DALI (Digital Accessible Lighting Interface)

All of these are solutions that will greatly benefit your green image, as well as your wallet!

1.   These are one of the more basic of lighting controls, but they still hold a powerful function!  Timers allow you to set the time length of a light staying on or off in a room.  Some of the more elaborate models will let you actually pre-set time slots to trigger when lights should come on or turn off.  This is a great application option when you have, say, a retail store in [city] and want to set timers for turning lights on when you are open for business, and turning them off at the end of the day.  This saves time taken to go through the building turning on all the lights and making the same trip around the store at closing time.
2.   With so many advancing lighting technologies on the market today, manual slider outlets are only the beginning!  Many dimmers now combine with timers, offering lighting control solutions that allow users to program varying light levels for different times of the day.  This is great in rooms with no sunlight accessible.  In a basement for example, it is a safety hazard to have lights completely off while the building is occupied, even when no one is in it.  With dimmers you can program them to run at only 30% power when no one is in the basement, and come up to full power when someone enters it.  This is also a great example of the power of dimmers working hand in hand with occupancy and vacancy sensors.

Occupancy and Vacancy Sensors.  Occupancy and vacancy sensors include two different types of lighting control:  Ultrasonic and infrared, sound and motion.  These are a great low-maintenance form of lighting controls because their function is simply to turn on when motion is detected, and turn back off when motion is no longer detected.  In places like stairwells where lights need to be on at all times, you can program lights to run at 25% power when it is vacant and at full power when someone enters.  This will save watts and money every year while still staying up to safety codes.  In one case study from GE Lighting, Metlife was able to save $196,000 annually by implementing these types of sensors along with daylighting sensors in their St. Louis office.

Most people are probably more familiar with infrared or motion sensors than with ultrasonic.  Infrared sensors can be more effective and useful over other lighting controls because of their automatic function.  Most of the time these controls are applied to specific rooms like a bathroom or closet, rooms that can be forgotten at closing time, or that do not need to be on at all times.  After a set time of not detecting movement, they turn themselves back off until someone opens the door again.  They are also more useful in outdoor applications than ultrasonic sensors are because they aren’t as sensitive to movement.

Ultrasonic sensors are a great alternative for indoor use because their trigger is sound.  The basic concept is that the sensor emits a sound frequency above human hearing levels, and any motion in the room will disturb that frequency and trigger the lights to come on.  To put it more simply, think of the sensor as a radar; once you enter the sensor’s radar the lights come on.  Because of the way they function, ultrasonic sensors are much more sensitive to movement.  It doesn’t take much to disturb the frequency it emits, and can actually cause more false alarms than infrared if say, a window is open and a breeze rolls in.

Daylighting Controls.  Also referred to as photosensor controls or photo sensors, daylighting controls utilize outside lighting conditions in order to determine light levels either inside or outside.  Using these sensors in indoor lighting applications is more effective when a building has enough windows to let a sufficient amount of natural light in.  It is also important to consider the type of business wanting to implement daylighting controls.  Clearly they would not work for areas where daylight cannot be reached like a basement or underground parking garage.  This leaves most other applications open to use daylighting effectively.  Indoor applications include offices or school buildings while outdoor applications can include parking lots and car dealerships.

If used for outside lighting, these controls determine whether the light comes on or stays off.  This is a great way to ensure your lights aren’t accidentally being left on during the day because it can be difficult to tell at a glance whether the bulb is lit or not.  Daylighting is a big money-saver for this purpose in outdoor applications like parking lots and even entire neighborhoods when a lot of lights need to be able to come on at the same time when it gets dark, and stay off all other times.

Addressable Lighting Controls.  Officially named Digital Addressable Lighting Interface, DALI is a kind of all-in-one solution for commercial lighting control applications.  It essentially creates a centralized control panel for all lights in a building, allowing them to be controlled in groups or even individually.  What’s even better is that the lights can be controlled using a smart phone or even your VoIP desk phone in the office.  Brightness, timing and occupancy can all be controlled in one area, making it the easiest form of lighting control in a building using several of these applications.  Westfield Corporate Office in Sydney, Australia implemented this type of interface and as a result was able to reduce their annual energy consumption by 30%!

Lighting controls are undoubtedly one of the greenest ways to reduce light pollution, on top of saving money by putting the control in your hands.  Since there are so many different types of controls to choose from you can really get creative with the way you want to utilize them.  For example, in an office building, let’s say you want dimmers in the hallways, motion sensors for supply closets, and daylighting for offices and conference rooms.  Now if you really want to take control, you can then take those controls and put them in one DALI control panel.

It’s okay to be excited about lighting controls, we are too.

So what are you waiting for?  Contact [company] to find out how you can take control!