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CATEGORY: Projects » Office
By Lighting Controls Association, on October 27, 2011
Inside Building 801 at the Boeing facility in Long Beach, California, there’s no shortage of big brains and high-tech marvels. That’s where the company is busy designing military aircraft such as the C17 “Globemaster III” transport plane for the U.S. Air Force.
The building houses a wide variety of impressive technologies, some of which have nothing to do with aviation. In fact, one of the latest additions is a brand new lighting system designed by Boeing facility engineer Jeff Haberman.
Haberman wanted to retrofit Building 801 with automated lighting controls that would significantly reduce the facility’s overall energy needs. Specifically, he wanted three things:
* To add photocells for daylight harvesting in all the offices and areas around the perimeter of the building where windows were providing natural light
* To install occupancy sensors in all corridors, private offices, break rooms, and conference rooms
* To set up an automated scheduler to reduce light levels at specific times of day
In order to design the new system, Haberman identified three different technologies that could provide him with the capabilities he was looking for: 0–10V dimming, DALI dimming, and DCL technology from Universal Lighting Technologies.
The first two solutions would force Boeing to install new control wiring throughout the building—an expensive prospect. They would also require a separate control system designed specifically for lighting. DCL, on the other hand, requires no additional control wiring. Instead, it communicates over the existing power circuits. Plus, DCL was fully compatible with the facility’s existing Building Management System (BMS).
As a result, the estimated cost of a DCL retrofit was 40% lower than either of the other two options—and only 5% more than the cost of a traditional lighting system! What’s more, the payback period for a DCL retrofit was less than 2.5 years, compared to approximately seven years for either of the other systems (including utility incentives).
 As you might guess, Boeing selected the DCL solution. According to Haberman, DCL required 90% less wiring than other systems, 60% less hardware, and 70% less programming. And he calls the installation “a piece of cake.”
The entire installation took place in November and December of 2010. All told, 2,050 fixtures were replaced. Each new fixture contains either two or three 32-watt T8 lamps attached to high-efficiency DEMANDflex ballasts from Universal Lighting Technologies. Each DEMANDflex ballast was “tuned” during installation to the optimal light level (ballast factor) for its specific environment, helping to eliminate the common—and costly—problem of over-lighting. These ballasts are specifically designed for DCL technology in order to communicate with the BMS at the circuit level.
Every night, the BMS signals the ballasts to cut power by 50% at 6 p.m. while the cleaning crew is in the building. At 7 p.m., the lights turn off. Of course, anyone still working in the building has the ability to override these commands and temporarily keep the lights on in his/her area. This can be done from any desktop computer or from a password-protected touchscreen display near the elevators on each floor. In addition, occupancy sensors reduce power levels to 34% in each office or common area when they detect that these spaces are unoccupied. And photocells automatically reduce unnecessary artificial light in areas near windows whenever they detect sunlight.
Haberman calls the control system “pretty darned simple” and reports that employee reaction has been “very positive.” And the results are outstanding: “We’ve seen a nearly 60% reduction in energy use for lighting,” said Haberman.
In real-world numbers, the lighting system in Building 801 previously required 950,000 kWh per year. The number now is approximately 400,000 kWh per year. That amounts to a 57% reduction in energy costs for lighting alone, or a 15% reduction in the building’s overall energy needs. “It works great,” said Haberman. “No other system comes close.”
As if that’s not impressive enough, Boeing also participates in a Demand Response Program with its local utility. This allows the utility to automatically reduce power to Building 801’s lighting system by 30% whenever the local power grid is near capacity. Not only does Boeing reduce its energy by 15.8 cents for every 1 kWh it saves through this program, but the utility provides Boeing with a $3 incentive for every 1 kWh saved as well.
How easy is it to reduce energy consumption and monthly power bills with DCL? According to Haberman, “Basically, it’s bulletproof.”
Learn more about Universal’s DCL technology here.
By Lighting Controls Association, on September 20, 2011
The Lighting Control Innovation Award was created in 2011 as part of the Illuminating Engineering Society’s Illumination Awards program, which recognizes professionalism, ingenuity and originality in lighting design. LCA is proud to sponsor the Lighting Control Innovation Award, which recognizes projects that exemplify the effective use of lighting controls in nonresidential applications. In this award’s first year, eight projects were recognized with an Award of Merit, with one further recognized with a Special Citation Award.
This month, we will explore the role that energy-saving lighting controls play in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Research Support Facility at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a net-zero-energy office building. Lighting design by Rachel Petro, Lighting Designer for RNL. Photography by Ron Pollard Photography and Frank Ooms Photography. Control manufacturers/products: Cooper Controls’ GreenGate Microset Occupancy Sensors, Sensor Switch’s PIR/Microphonic Ceiling Mounted Sensors (private offices), Douglas Lighting Controls’ W2000 System.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory campus houses the nation’s largest net-zero energy office building. The 222,000 square-foot Research Support Facility is pursuing LEED Platinum certification and is designed to consume 50% less energy than a baseline code-compliant building.
The challenge was to design lighting and control systems to complement a day-lit building that consumes as little energy as practical to provide a safe and pleasant working environment, inside and out, within a conservative budget.
Daylight harvesting is utilized in all spaces with daylight contribution. Public spaces are programmed for manual on with time-clock off sweeps. Enclosed spaces are vacancy controlled with occupancy sensors.
The building’s 60-foot width and east-west orientation allows for full daylight penetration. Detailed control zones were implemented to maximize potential energy savings; small switch zones overlap local and
global daylight harvesting zones.
Efficient dimmable, direct/indirect luminaires, compliment exposed structure while running parallel to the windows for optimal daylight harvest zoning.
Private office furniture partitions were integrated with wall-box occupancy sensors, programmed for manual on, control independent 8-foot luminaire sections.
Local photocells provide dimming daylight harvesting, while global photocells provide on/off control for when dimming isn’t enough.
LED site lighting is aggressively controlled for optimal energy savings; accent lights are on during regularly occupied hours of darkness only, full cut-off area lighting is controlled at low-medium-high output levels by a combination of photocell, time-clock, and occupancy sensors.
Occupancy sensors were integrated into the area poles to control pathways, reducing every-other pole to low and off when unoccupied.
The resulting facility is striking, utilizing light only when and where needed, minimizing energy consumption, maximizing occupants’ experience. The control system greatly optimizes performance over the
connected load, resulting in an approximate daily average usage of less than 0.08 W/SF, far surpassing baseline energy code standards.
Got a project? Criteria for the new award, along with submissions forms and procedures, can be viewed at www.IES.org/programs/ia.cfm.
By Lighting Controls Association, on April 13, 2011
 The Military Engineer recently published an article about customizing lighting control, citing the Department of State’s Office of Facilities Management Services successful tailoring of lighting control solutions based on building type, use and other factors.
Check it out here.
By Lighting Controls Association, on March 16, 2011
 NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida hosts a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the space agency's most environmentally friendly facility, the Propellants North Administrative and Maintenance Facility in Kennedy's Launch Complex 39 area. From left, are Mike Benik, director of Kennedy's Center Operations; James Wright, deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Strategic Infrastructure at NASA Headquarters; Bob Cabana, Kennedy's center director; Ward Davis, president of HW Davis Construction Inc. in Cape Canaveral, FL, installed a light control system from Lutron Electronics Co., Inc. The Propellants North Administrative and Maintenance Facility is using innovative light control strategies to dramatically reduce energy consumption and maximize the use of available daylight.
“We are thrilled to help NASA achieve net zero energy use in their greenest facilty to-date with simple light control strategies that can save up to 60 percent of lighting energy and increase employee comfort and productivity,” said Andy Wakefield, Government Business Development Director at Lutron.
The light controls at the Propellants North Administrative and Maintenance Facility include wireless wall-mounted controls, digitally addressable electronic ballasts, occupancy sensors and daylight sensors to dramatically reduce energy use. “Many of the office walls are solid glass, so installing wireless wall-mounted controls was the perfect solution to allow the buildings to maximize use of available daylight at all times,” said Wakefield.
The recently rebuilt building will be NASA’s first carbon neutral facility, which means it will produce enough energy on site from renewable sources to offset what it requires to operate. The facility will also reach for the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED) Platinum status, which is the highest LEED rating.
By Lighting Controls Association, on October 23, 2010
Encelium Technologies offers an innovative office lighting control system to drive substantial lighting energy savings in office buildings. Encelium’s Energy Control System™ (ECS) has been proven to secure lighting energy savings of 50% to 75% in office applications.
Throughout North America, many building owners are looking for ways to optimize economic, energy and environmental performance of their buildings. Energy reduction for commercial office buildings can amount to a significant impact on the bottom line.
“Office environments offer a massive opportunity for energy savings.” said Tony Marano, president and CEO of Encelium. “By implementing a revolutionary energy management system like ECS, office buildings can take advantage of six energy management strategies allowing for lighting energy savings of 50-75% while maintaining optimum lighting quality.”
Encelium’s Case Study on Liberty Property Trust demonstrates ECS in action in an office environment with a savings of 60% of lighting energy consumption. The Case Study is available at http://bit.ly/9xkPMM.
ECS seamlessly integrates and simultaneously deploys six user-friendly energy-management strategies facility-wide. These include personal controls, task tuning, daylight harvesting, smart time scheduling, occupancy sensing and load shedding. As the most advanced lighting control solution for commercial buildings, ECS typically meets or exceeds today’s sustainable requirements for new or existing office buildings. Designed to reduce lighting-related energy costs by 50 to 75 percent, the system also contributes between 12 to 18 points, depending on the application, toward achieving the coveted U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED).
Encelium’s Energy Control System™ (ECS), the most advanced lighting control solution on the market. ECS reduces lighting energy consumption as well as energy costs at a faster rate than other environmental measures and has an average payback on investment of two to five years. Since the company’s founding in 2001, ECS has been installed in more than 30 million square feet of commercial space across North America and Europe. The company has experienced tremendous growth, posting a 200 percent annual increase during the last two years.
For more information about Encelium and ECS solutions, visit www.encelium.com.
By Craig DiLouie, on June 23, 2010
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has unveiled the Commercial Lighting Solutions for Office webtool. Available free at www.lightingsolutions.energy.gov, CLS for Office provides customizable lighting and control templates enabling building owners to generate more than 30% lighting energy savings compared to office buildings complying with prevailing energy codes.
Why is this big news?
The Federal stimulus targeted $5 billion to upgrade Federal buildings, with an estimated $1 billion being spent on lighting. The CLS for Office webtool was fast-tracked by DOE to support Federal facility managers who will be looking for solutions. Meanwhile, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires all new nonresidential Federal buildings to exceed ASHRAE 90.1-2004 by 30%.
Green construction is growing from about 10% of the current commercial building market to 20-2% by 2013, or $96-$140 billion, according to McGraw-Hill. Public construction at state and local levels benefits from Federal stimulus money as well, and more than 30 states, 35 counties and 135 cities now have laws and policies requiring or encouraging the use of LEED in public construction. These jurisdictions may begin adopting green construction codes based on standards such as ASHRAE’s new Standard 189.1, published in January.
LEED 2009 requires the building to achieve 10% lower energy consumption than ASHRAE 90.1-2007, and assigns LEED points towards different levels of certification based on going above and beyond. The ASHRAE 189.1 green construction code caps maximum allowable lighting power density at 90% of 90.1-2007.
Saving energy is easy. One could find some light fixtures with the highest efficiency possible, for example—say, some industrial open-bottomed strips with T5 or T8 lamps, install them in an open office, and dramatically reduce energy use. The only problem would be the people working in that office would hate being in the space, as that type of light fixture, while highly efficient, is also a “glare bomb” at typical office mounting heights. The employees would come to work wearing baseball caps—or not at all.
Saving energy while providing good lighting quality is hard, particularly when tasked to save lighting energy compared to a building already complying with ASHRAE 90.1-2004. In fact, it is arguable that only design leaders in the field can do it well.
To take on this problem, the Department of Energy launched the Commercial Lighting Solutions (CLS) program at www.lightingsolutions.energy.gov. CLS is a webtool that allows people to customize lighting templates designed to produce 30+% energy savings compared to ASHRAE 90.1-2004, while also providing good lighting, in different building types. The tool includes extensive lighting control templates developed by the author in collaboration with the Lighting Controls Association.
Following the CLS for Retail webtool, which launched at last year’s LIGHTFAIR, CLS for Office launched at LIGHTFAIR 2010 in May.
Here’s how it works.
The user provides information about the building, such as location, operating hours and prevailing energy code. Next, the user selects a typical office space within the building, including private office, open plan, open plan perimeter, corridor, conference room and reception area, and enters information about it, such as total area, ceiling height and whether there is daylight present. If daylight enters the space, additional information is requested, including shading, presence of light shelves, orientation, etc.
The webtool takes this information and produces several lighting options, called lighting vignettes. Suppose we want to meet certain energy-saving and lighting quality goals in the renovation of a series of private offices. After entering some information, we are given a choice of direct/indirect pendant light fixtures or recessed lensed, with lighting power densities (W/sq.ft.) up to 35% lower than the maximum allowed by ASHRAE 90.1-2004/2007 using the Space by Space Method. All lighting vignettes were designed by lighting design firm Horton Lees Brogden.
After selecting the lighting vignette, control options are presented. The control options were developed in an exhaustive process involving members of the Lighting Controls Association and its parent, the NEMA Lighting Controls Section. Due to the multitude of control choices, the user is given a general performance spec and clearly expressed design intent based on their control choices.
In the case of private offices, for example, the user can choose a manual-ON occupancy sensor with either bilevel switching or manual dimming and a photosensor for daylight harvesting.
With both the lighting and control options selected, total energy savings is shown at the bottom. The user can now download an energy summary, implementation instructions for the different spaces/lighting templates, and a light fixture schedule. For the lighting, the implementation instructions include sample lighting layout, light levels, contrast ratios, color rendering, how to integrate the electric lighting with the daylighting and notes on maintenance.
For the controls, the implementation instructions include a strategy description, color-coded control zone drawing revealing the strategy at a glance, performance specifications and notes on maintenance and commissioning.
Using the CLS for Office webtool, construction professionals can achieve lighting designs that maximize both energy efficiency and lighting quality. It’s available free here: www.lightingsolutions.energy.gov.
By Lighting Controls Association, on June 23, 2010
 When one of the nation’s leading commercial developer of green office and industrial buildings sought to optimize the economic, energy and environmental performance of its Malvern, Pa.-based corporate headquarters, Liberty Property Trust partnered with Encelium Technologies to reduce overall lighting energy consumption by 60 percent. The real estate investment trust, which owns 77 million square feet of office and industrial space in more than 20 markets throughout the United States and the United Kingdom, used its 31,000-square-foot office building as a pilot demonstration site of Encelium’s highly advanced Energy Control System (ECS) for use in its other properties.
Originally tasked with the goal of reducing lighting energy consumption by 50 percent and delivering a payback from energy savings in less than five years, the installation of ECS yielded better-than-expected results. With an annual energy cost reduction of $10,383 or about $0.33/square foot, Liberty also achieved its payback goal in less than four years. (See case study: http://www.encelium.com/pdf/case-studies/EnceliumLibertyPropertyTrustCaseStudy.pdf)
“We wanted to use our own office space to evaluate the system and determine actual savings and whether advanced network lighting controls made sense for all of our properties,” said Fred Dougherty, Liberty’s vice president of portfolio technology. “We are very serious about reducing our carbon footprint, increasing energy performance and looking to potentially include this type of lighting control system on other LEED certification development activities.”
Liberty has almost 8 million square feet of LEED space completed or under construction nationwide. The company has been acknowledged with numerous industry awards for its initiatives to develop, retrofit and operate its buildings in an environmentally sensitive manner.
ECS seamlessly integrates and simultaneously deploys six user-friendly energy-management strategies facility-wide. These include personal controls, task tuning, daylight harvesting, smart time scheduling, occupancy sensing and load shedding. Utilizing Encelium’s Polaris software, Liberty was able to collect data on each energy management strategy, validate the savings and further optimize performance and dollar savings.
“ECS is ideal for retrofits or new construction for all buildings types, including office buildings, schools, healthcare and public facilities, parking garages, big-box retail, stadiums and warehouse space,” said Tony Marano, president and chief executive officer of Encelium Technologies. “Not only does the system create economic value and give property owners, managers and end-users unprecedented digital control, ECS also effectively and efficiently improves workplace ergonomics, occupant productivity and tenant satisfaction.”
As the most advanced lighting control solution for commercial buildings, ECS typically meets or exceeds today’s sustainable requirements for new or existing office buildings, including Title 24, ASHRAE 90.1 and is eligible for various utility rebate programs and local “green” building mandates. Designed to reduce lighting-related energy costs by 50 to 75 percent, the system also contributes between 12 to 18 points, depending on the application, toward achieving the coveted U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED).
Using the collaborative power of addressable networking technology in conjunction with advanced control hardware and software, ECS reduces lighting use and energy costs at a faster rate than other environmental measures and has an average payback on investment of two to five years. Since 2001, ECS has been installed in more than 25 million square feet of commercial space across North America and Europe. Encelium has posted a 200 percent annual growth increase during the last two years. Headquartered in Teaneck, N.J., the company also has operations in Canada and Europe.
For more information about Encelium Technologies, visit www.encelium.com.
By Craig DiLouie, on March 23, 2010
 Electric bills paid by commercial building owners often have a consumption and a demand component. The consumption component is the amount of electric energy, measured in kWh, that the building consumes in a given month. The demand component reflects maximum demand, measured in kW, that the building uses over a given time period. Peak demand is the most expensive power that a generator produces and can represent a significant part of the electric bill.
Utilities, Independent System Operators (ISOs) and other power providers servicing commercial buildings share a common interest with their customers to reduce peak demand. This is because shaving the peak enables these organizations to satisfy customer demand while avoiding the high cost of building new capacity or having to buy very expensive power from other markets during an emergency or demand spike. Besides charging more for power used during peak demand periods, a number of utilities and ISOs offer financial incentives to building owners to curtail load on request, usually during an emergency grid event such as during brownout or imminent blackout conditions.
Role of code and standards
Demand response is now beginning to be required by codes and standards—in particular, at present, California’s Title 24-2008 energy code and ASHRAE 189.1 standard for designing high-performance green buildings.
California’s Title 24-2008, which became effective January 1, 2010, requires demand-responsive lighting controls in retail buildings that have a sales floor area larger than 50,000 sq.ft. The code defines demand-responsive lighting control as “control that reduces lighting power consumption in response to a demand response signal.” In this case, the lighting controls must be able to uniformly reduce lighting power by at least 15%. The requirement does not apply if the building’s lighting already has 50% or more of the total lighting wattage controlled by daylight harvesting controls.
Section 7.4.5.1 of ASHRAE 189.1 requires peak electric load reduction capability. The building must contain automatic systems capable of reducing peak electric demand by at least 10%, not including standby power generation.
The role of demand response in codes and standards is likely to intensify in the future. According to the Department of Energy, about 281 gigawatts of new generating capacity will be needed by 2025 to satisfy growing demand for energy, much of which will be allocated solely to satisfy peak demand. This is nearly a thousand 300MW power plants.
Role for dimmable lighting
To reduce peak demand, we can turn equipment off, turn it down or use it more efficiently. Strategies include equipment downsizing, duty cycling, thermal storage, improved maintenance, commissioning. Lighting, at first glance, has a small role to play. While we can use it more efficiently, it is difficult to turn lighting off in routinely occupied spaces for obvious reasons and cannot be turned down in many spaces without installing dimmable ballasts. But what if we did just that—replace every fluorescent ballasts in a commercial office with dimmable ballasts? It is commonly accepted that typical levels of automatic dimming, occurring in strategies such as a daylight harvesting, is unlikely to be noticed or found irritable by occupants. Researchers at the National Research Council Canada – Institute for Research in Construction (NRC-IRC) put this notion to the test, conducting a study to determine how far, how fast and over what period lighting can be dimmed before occupants notice and are adversely affected.
The researchers conducted two laboratory studies in full-scale office mockups where various dimming scenarios were studied with typical office workers performed office tasks, and then designed a field study, conducted during the summer, that included an open-plan office with 330 dimmable light fixtures and a college campus with 1,850 dimmable fixtures in several buildings. Load shedding was undertaken during afternoon hours over several days. The rate of dimming spanned one to 30 minutes with dimming reductions up to 40%. Occupants were warned that an experiment would be conducted over the summer involving afternoon dimming, but were not told which days.
In the field study, lighting loads were able to be reduced by 14-23% without occupant complaint. Based on this data coupled with the lab study data, NRC-IRC developed several recommendations.
Stage 1: This type of demand response involves dimming by amounts that are not noticed by the large majority of occupants. Dimming can occur rapidly, over as little as 10 seconds, by 20% with no daylight, 40% with low prevailing daylight, and 60% with high prevailing daylight. If dimming occurs slowly, over 30 minutes or more, and with no immediate expectation of dimming occurring, levels may drop by 30% with no daylight and 60% with high prevailing daylight.
Stage 2: This type of demand response involves more load reduction, with steeper reductions in light levels but still acceptable to a large majority of occupants. Dimming can occur rapidly, over as little as 10 seconds, by 40% with no low daylight and 80% with high prevailing daylight. If dimming occurs slowly, over 30 minutes or more, and with no immediate expectation of dimming occurring, levels may drop by 50% with no daylight and 80% with high prevailing daylight.
The researchers emphasize that these recommendations relate only to situations where load shedding is performed to alleviate the effect of temporary—and infrequent—grid stress events, with dimming lasting a few hours at most. The recommendations are not intended to replace current lighting practice and support daily load shedding.
By Lighting Controls Association, on January 23, 2010
 WearGuard-Crest, a division of ARAMARK, set an ambitious goal: to replace all the lighting fixtures throughout 280,000 square feet of office, manufacturing, and retail space at its headquarters in Norwell, Massachusetts, just south of Boston. Furthermore, the company wanted the project to pay for itself in energy savings.
J&R Wiring, Inc., took up the challenge. After researching the most advanced lighting control systems on the market today, J&R Wiring identified the one technology with the most powerful return on investment (ROI)—DCL® (Demand Control Lighting) from Universal Lighting Technologies.
Only DCL technology can reduce power to lighting ballasts as much as 50 percent without the need to install expensive control wiring. The DCL Control System can be operated manually or automated for “set it and forget it” simplicity. The control system communicates with the ballasts at the circuit level. Each lighting circuit can be controlled individually for zone programming. By eliminating the need for extra wiring, DCL technology is simple to install in retrofit projects or new construction.
After identifying DCL as the ideal solution, J&R Wiring worked with Universal Lighting Technologies to design an automated lighting control program that would optimize energy savings throughout the WearGuard-Crest facility. Lighting fixtures in the office, lobby, and hallway areas would be divided into eight zones with photocells for daylight harvesting between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. In addition, the entire facility would be controlled by scheduling software so that lights would automatically adjust to 50-percent power at 6:00 p.m. for cleaning crews and then zero percent at 11:00 p.m. Under this plan, J&R Wiring projected an energy savings of 539,531 kilowatt-hours, which represents a 45 percent reduction in power being consumed by the facility’s lighting fixtures. Next, J&R Wiring approached the local electric utility, National Grid, to discuss possible incentives for WearGuard. Through its Energy Initiative program, National Grid provides incentives for energy efficient retrofits for its commercial and industrial customers. For this project, National Grid performed an independent review of DCL technology and its benefits for WearGuard-Crest and provided significant incentives. Another advantage to WearGuard-Crest was that DCL allowed them to participate in National Grid’s Demand Response Program. Although no longer offered, this program gave National Grid the ability to request that participating companies voluntarily slash their demand by a set percent when the local electrical grid is approaching capacity.
This is occasionally necessary during peak hours for energy use, which is—not coincidentally—when electricity rates are at their highest. Cutting energy use during peak hour rates is a significant source of financial savings for companies with high energy bills. These savings are simple to achieve with DCL technology whether or not the company is part of a Demand Response Program.
In Sept. 2008, the installation began. First, J&R Wiring replaced the facility’s outdated lighting equipment with DEMANDflex™ ballasts from Universal Lighting Technologies. These high-efficiency T8 ballasts can be individually “tuned” by the installer to the appropriate power level (ballast factor) in order to ensure just the right amount of light for the application. This helps eliminate overlighting and wasting energy.
According to J&R Wiring President Jim Killian, the DEMANDflex ballasts at WearGuard-Crest were tuned ten to 20 percent below full power during installation for immediate energy savings even before the DCL Control System was installed.
 “There was quite a bit of saving from tuning alone,” said Killian. “We were able to reduce power levels ten percent or more, and the ballasts are producing better light for less energy.”
Installation of the DCL Control System began in January 2009. The daylight harvesting zones and automated scheduling software have performed exactly as demanded.
“The installation went off without a hitch,” said Chris Hart, senior electrician for WearGuard-Crest. “This is a powerful front-end control system that is also extremely economical.”
Once WearGuard-Crest has recouped its investment in DCL technology, the energy savings will continue to compile month after month.
“Daylight harvesting is knocking down power consumption significantly,” said Killian. “And I’m impressed with the extremely subtle and extremely smooth changes in lighting.”
National Grid encourages its other customers to aggressively investigate the power of energy-saving lighting technologies, especially “whole-building” solutions such as DCL technology.
“Addressable lighting control systems like this one have a lot of potential for energy savings and carbon footprint reductions,” said Thomas Coughlin, commercial/industrial lighting program manager for National Grid. “We’ve had a very good experience,” said Killian. “I’m very happy with the product overall.”
ARAMARK is a leader in professional services, providing award-winning food services, facilities management, and uniform and career apparel to healthcare institutions, universities and school districts, stadiums and arenas, and businesses in 22 countries around the world.
With more than 500 employees at its facilities in Norwell, WearGuard-Crest has been America’s premier direct mail retailer of work clothes and personalized uniforms for almost 50 years.
For more information about Universal Lighting Technologies, visit www.unvlt.com.
By Lighting Controls Association, on June 12, 2009
Glenn D. Hughes, president of Glenn D. Hughes Consulting Associates and the director of construction for The New York Times Company during the design, installation, and commissioning of the new 52-story New York Times Building, last year made news with his announcement that the Quantum total light management system in the building was achieving a 70 percent lighting energy savings.
During a special webcast on April 7, Hughes provided a detailed review of one full year’s worth of data demonstrating that the total light management system in the building is exceeding the previous benchmark of 70 percent. Hughes said total light management “represents the single greatest opportunity for energy savings in commercial buildings, whether retrofit or new construction projects.”
With help from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Hughes began his presentation with a myriad of statistics about national energy usage, including the fact that buildings account for 71 percent of electricity consumption in the United States and that lighting is the single greatest energy user in commercial buildings.
Hughes said the cost savings yielded by the total light management system adds up to $30,000 per year per floor for the floors where it has been installed. This equates to approximately $1 per square foot per year. He attributed the cost savings to a significant reduction in lighting and cooling load.
Hughes discussed the additional value-add of increased productivity resulting from the improved lighting environment. Assuming a 1% increase in productivity (a conservative estimate), Hughes asserted that the Quantum system paid for itself in less than a year. He also emphasized that this value-add goes on year after year.
The energy consultant stratified his data in a number of different ways, including season by season to take into account differing conditions of natural light and heat.
Last year, Hughes was widely quoted for announcing, “We designed our building to use 1.28 watts per square foot of lighting power. With Quantum™, it’s using only 0.38–that’s 70 percent less.”
During the webcast, he unveiled data showing that the building’s Quantum total light management system equaled or surpassed that figure in each of the past four seasons:
Winter (2008-09): 0.37 W/sq. ft.
Fall (2008): 0.37 W/sq. ft.
Summer (2008) 0.33 W/sq. ft.
Spring (2008) 0.38 W/sq. ft.
The seasonal data reflects a yearly lighting energy savings of 72 percent.
To view the webcast or for more information please visit www.lutron.com/nyt.
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