Lighting > Integrated Lighting Automation

Existing Conditions

In general, the lights in the building operate shorter hours than most buildings, but they still operate longer than necessary. There are occupancy sensors located on the fourth floor and in washrooms throughout the building.

There are also large perimeter areas with windows letting in natural daylight for much of each day. Artificial lighting near the windows remains on throughout a typical day, regardless of the amount of natural light, and at times it adds very little to the level of lighting at the work surfaces.

Retrofit Conditions

We recommend installing a central lighting control system, incorporating several technologies, to:

•	Take advantage of daylighting, dimming or shutting off perimeter lights when natural light is available and adequate.

•	Provide flexibility in controlling light levels at each office and workstation, through a simple PC software interface, allowing occupants to reduce glare from computer screens and attain a comfortable lighting level.

•	Turn off lights based on occupancy sensing, where appropriate.

•	Schedule zones, rooms, or even individual light fixtures independently.

•	Change the configuration of zones and schedules any time, without changing hardware.

An extensive lighting control system such as DALI (Fifth Light Technologies) incorporates personal lighting control, occupancy control, time scheduling, daylight harvesting, and variable load shedding to improve lighting and provide aggressive energy savings. Software flexibility allows building operators to control lighting to actual need, rather than the greatest anticipated need, and to adapt easily to occupancy changes.

This opportunity includes installation of dimmable ballasts in the existing fluorescent fixtures, along with a communication module that will allow each fixture to be addressed individually on a local area network.

Further Benefits

There is also potential income from demand response (DR) programs. The Ontario government, through the Ontario Power Authority (OPA), has created a DR plan for managing peak loads. Signing up to a DR program through a load aggregator (one example is Energent Inc.) can result in significant savings.

During peak load times, the load aggregator detects demand response opportunities and notifies its customers electronically. The customer then chooses to participate and provides an indication of their curtailment intent (i.e. their load reduction in kW). At the end of each month, Energent pays its customers for their participation. In turn, the OPA pays the load aggregator for administering the pool of participants.