The Illuminating Engineering Society, in partnership with the Lighting Controls Association, has published LEM-7, Lighting Controls for Energy Management, a detailed guide to energy-saving lighting controls. The publication was written by Craig DiLouie, LC in support of the IES Energy Management Committee. The 48-page 8.5×11 guide, which is available for $35 (IES members) and $50 […]


Lighting Controls Association Updates Education Express Course on Fluorescent Dimming
The Lighting Controls Association is pleased to announce that it has updated EE103: Fluorescent Dimming, a popular offering in the Association’s Education Express series of online distance education courses about lighting controls. The new course, authored by Craig DiLouie, principal of ZING Communications, Inc. and LCA’s Education Director, is divided into two sections: Dimming Control, and Fluorescent Dimming Ballasts. The first section, Dimming Control, provides an in-depth introduction to dimming, including popular dimming strategies, methods, controls, human perception and response, and how different light sources behave while dimmed. The second section, Fluorescent Dimming Ballasts, covers technology and application issues such as dimming methods and lamp-ballast interactions.

Study Points to Productivity Benefits of Adjustable Lighting Control
“If you boost the lighting at certain times of day, you’ll get a better performance from workers,” remarks Dr Martine Knoop, a senior lighting specialist at Philips Lighting, commenting on the study that took place at Bartenbach Lichtlabor in Austria. The scientists found in 2007 that if offices used more adjustable lighting, the employees working within them would work more productively.

DALI and the Promise of Digital Dimming
Dimming of fluorescent lighting offers significant benefits in terms of supporting visual needs with good lighting, giving users control of their own lighting, and energy savings. The advent of digital dimming offers a new option with clear advantages over traditional analog dimming. Digital dimming can be used almost anywhere that analog dimming can be used, for the same purposes: visual needs, personal control, daylight harvesting, scheduling and other control strategies. If fluorescent dimming is desirable for a given application, digital dimming can offer distinct advantages related to intelligence, flexibility and two-way communication.

Fluorescent Retrofits for High/Low-Bay Applications
Indoor spaces with high ceilings, such as factories, warehouses, big box retail stores, gymnasiums and all-purpose rooms are often lighted by probe-start metal halide lighting systems. At higher ceiling heights, 350W and 400W units are common …
Advancements in lamp and ballast technology have resulted in two alternatives to this basic system that can significantly reduce energy consumption while providing other benefits. The first alternative is fluorescent T8 or T5HO hi-bay fixtures, which can replace probe-start metal halide fixtures in retrofit or new construction for energy savings up to about 50%. The second alternative is pulse-start metal halide lamp-ballast systems, which can provide up to 25% energy cost savings in existing applications and up to 30% in capital and operating costs in new construction.
Port of Seattle Headquarters
Pier 69 on Seattle’s historic waterfront was built in 1931 to warehouse rolls of metal for the production of canned salmon containers. The only concrete pier on the waterfront, Pier 69 stretches over 750 feet long and 135 feet wide. Hewitt Isley tackled this stolid building to create a new home for the Port of Seattle’s administrative headquarters. Their dynamic reno-vation created what the Seattle Weekly named “one of the grandest indoor spaces in the Northwest.”