Smarter Lighting for Smarter Occupancy
Hybrid working is increasingly being accepted as the norm and many facilities managers are having to adapt quickly to meet the challenge of these new practices.
Rachel Morris, of Ansell Lighting, looks how smart lighting can help companies optimise space and energy use in the face of a changing work landscape, to achieve cost and environmental savings.
The reduced and inconsistent use of workspace triggered by Covid can create a challenge many building managers will have to navigate, particularly if the UK follows the Netherlands’ radical lead and makes working from home a legal right.
Lighting accounts for almost 40% of all energy used in commercial buildings in the UK, and with energy prices showing no sign of returning to normal in the foreseeable future, paying hugely inflated bills on offices frequently operating below capacity will place another burden on those already negotiating a tight bottom line.
What Does Smart Lighting Offer?
Installing a cloud-hosted smart lighting system, even on a large scale, does not require major infrastructure changes and causes minimal disruption, as there is no hub or wiring to be fitted and modern LED lamps are compatible with all the main voltage systems.
The key with lighting for smart occupancy is to provide light only when and where it is needed. It removes the onus on individuals to control lighting and enables companies to create lighting schedules which fit around shift patterns, working hours or seasons.
Smart lighting solutions for the commercial space now come with dashboard controls which allow building managers to accurately measure energy usage in real time and optimise office lighting performance.
Energy data is measured at each connected light point and visualised on the dashboard, providing insights into how much energy is consumed per area on an hourly, daily, monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis. By combining this information with other data such as presence detection, shift patterns and work activity rosters, it is possible to establish how lighting energy use can be further reduced or optimised by adapting lighting schedules to fit operational needs.
It can provide a clear view of lighting-based energy consumption data across one office or an entire portfolio of offices. Building managers can examine the data to compare sites, benchmark usage and identify opportunities to reduce energy use and, therefore costs.
Reducing energy use means lower CO2 emissions, so it will also support your sustainability goals.
A smart lighting system can achieve energy savings in a number of ways.
LEDs
LEDs turn roughly 70% of their energy into light. In a domestic setting, the Energy Saving Trust has calculated that replacing bulbs with low energy LEDs would save around £40 a year on electricity bills, so it is easy to imagine the potential savings if that is scaled up to a commercial or industrial environment.
Maintenance is also low-cost as LEDs last for around 30,000 hours without overheating or developing faults. A smart LED lamp sells for only a couple of pounds more than a standard LED lamp, but offers much more in terms of features and functionality.
Connected LED luminaires throughout the building can be controlled remotely by a software which allows the user to drill down to a single light point, even granting permissions and access rights to different employees for various parts of the building.
The ability to get to this level of granular details also means having the option to give all employees a level of personal control over their localised light settings, to allow them to set lights to their own comfort level.
The use of low energy LEDs with smart sensors takes energy conservation to a whole new level - the Carbon Trust estimates that automatic sensors alone can cut electricity use by up to 40%.
Daylight Harvesting
Daylight harvesting employs smart sensors which measure the amount of natural light available and supply just enough electrical light to obtain the required uniform illuminance in a space.
The levels of artificial light provided will vary greatly between a modern open plan offices with large windows, where LEDs can be dimmed, and smaller rooms where natural lighting is reduced.
Absence And Presence Detectors
Motion sensors are programmed to detect when somebody enters a room, triggering the luminaires to provide light as long as the room is in use. The minute the person (or people) leaves the room, the lights automatically switch off.
This intelligent use of light is sustainable as well as cost-efficient.
Corridor Functionality
For larger buildings, corridor function offers extreme flexibility for thoroughfares which are vital to providing safe and well-lit connections between departments, and are of particular value during winter months or for workplaces operating night shifts.
Lights along the length of a corridor can be programmed to be dimmed or switched off when nobody is detected in the space, but will instantly provide illumination throughout its length when a person enters one end of the corridor, for the duration of their transit.
Lighting For Productivity
An automated lighting control solution, used with RGB and tunable white LED lights which offer millions of different colour settings, can be programmed to recreate the natural light patterns which are known to support our circadian rhythm, or ‘body clock’, which is vital to health and wellbeing.
Luminaires can be set to emit specific combinations of brightness, intensity and colour settings to recreate the natural lighting patterns that promote energy and a positive mood.
For example, cooler light hues are known to supress the production of melatonin (the hormone that encourages sleep) and promote a feeling of alertness. Programming this type of lighting would not only benefit the three million-plus people the Trades Union Congress (TUC) estimates are currently working night shifts, but also support productivity and help reduce sickness absence.
The creation of workplaces that promote wellbeing and productivity makes a smart lighting solution well worth investigating, but never more so than when it can also make a significant continuation to minimising energy costs.
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