A challenge with lighting controls is that, as needs grow more sophisticated, the solutions needed to satisfy project requirements become more inherently complex. To support adoption of advanced lighting controls, the U.S. Department of Energy recently published “Selecting Lighting Control Systems,” a best practices guide that provides a four-step process to maximizing the odds of success.

Identify goals

The lighting designer should talk to the owner or representative to characterize the application, users and what the system should do. This information should be put in a document called the Owner Project Requirements. Owner goals can cover ground such as preferred vendors and maintainability, but can be categorized by up to four use cases based on benefits.

• Energy code compliance: Commercial building energy codes regulate design energy efficiency in new buildings and renovations. Because compliance is required in most projects, it forms a baseline use case. These codes include mandatory lighting control requirements for automatic shutoff or reduction with manual space controls.
• Enhanced energy management: These project goals go beyond minimum energy code requirements to cover advanced capabilities, which range from lighting control strategies such as high-end trim, to measuring and monitoring, to building systems integration.
• Enhanced lighting performance: Certain lighting control strategies can be deployed to enhance occupant productivity and satisfaction by expanding control over the lighted environment with capabilities such as scene control, tunable white lighting and more.
• Enhanced facility productivity: Project goals involve producing building and operational data from an appropriate networked lighting control system. The data, in turn, is used for analytics and services such as indoor positioning, asset tracking, occupant counting and patterns and maintenance.
  

Define system capabilities

Next, the designer should list what commercially available lighting control capabilities will be required.

• Energy code compliance: System capabilities include switching/local control, time scheduling, occupancy sensing, daylight-­responsive control, dimming and plug load (receptacle) control.
• Enhanced energy management: Capabilities include task tuning, lumen maintenance dimming, motorized system control, plug load control, demand response, external system integration, energy measuring and reporting, and system diagnostics and monitoring.
• Enhanced lighting performance: Those include dimming, scene control, tunable-white light, task tuning, lumen maintenance dimming and motorized system control.
• Enhanced facility productivity: System capabilities include external system integration, energy measurement and reporting, system diagnostics and monitoring, indoor positioning, asset tracking, and occupant counting.
  

Evaluate system architecture

Third, the system designer should evaluate control systems.

• Scale: There are three main options. Room-based systems can either operate on a standalone basis or be networked to build a larger-scale system spanning a suite of rooms, floor or building. A suite/floor/building-scale system may be fully networked or configured in a hybrid approach, where certain rooms or devices operate standalone while others are networked and programmed to share data and operate as a system. A campus/portfolio system is basically a building-scale system but with an added communication layer that enables interactions across buildings.
• Networking enables data sharing between lighting control devices, which permits remote configuration and zoning, sophisticated control behaviors, and enhanced integration and data collection. The control intelligence may be centralized, distributed or adopt a hybrid approach. For example, in a luminaire-level lighting control system, the intelligence is distributed in embedded controls in the luminaires, though they may also connect to a central server for group capabilities such as scheduling.
• Luminaire zoning: Larger control zones (larger number of luminaires controlled by a device) tend to be simpler to design and impose a lower installation and configuration cost. Smaller control zones tend to increase control response, flexibility and energy savings. Luminaires can be assigned to smaller zones for certain functionality and larger zones for others.
• Wired versus wireless: Control devices can be connected through dedicated control wiring, a digital wireless network or a hybrid approach. For example, a building with a wired building-scale networked control system may use wireless communication in certain local applications.
• System components: The DOE guide identifies and defines all system hardware typically deployed in lighting control systems.
  

Document the concept, design and operation

In addition to other design documentation, the lighting control system designer produces a Control Intent Narrative, which conceptually identifies what the system will do to satisfy the owner’s requirements, followed by a Sequence of Operations, which details specific behaviors for all control points. 

Download the DOE’s guide here.

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