Maintenance Solutions Magazine recently published an interesting article by Denise Fong, a principal of lighting design firm Candela, that talks about the six categories of lighting controls. The Lighting Controls Association was proud to sponsor this special section.
When an institutional or commercial organization builds a new facility or renovates an existing one, occupants encounter a lighting system — including new lamps, ballasts, and controls — designed to be more energy efficient than the system it replaced. But whether the system actually performs up to expectations often depends on maintenance and engineering managers. The task for managers and their staffs is to oversee and operate these new systems efficiently and cost-effectively to provide as many benefits as possible to their organizations, including energy savings and reduced maintenance costs related to labor and parts.
Lighting controls offer an appealing array of opportunities. Lighting-control strategies fall into six categories: turning off the lights in unoccupied spaces; turning off or reducing output when daylight is available; reducing output in spaces with limited occupancy; reducing output when multiple uses require lower light levels; reducing lumen maintenance by tuning lights to less-than-full output when lamps are new and tuning higher as lamps age and output drops; and reducing the output based on need or personal preference.
Click here to read the rest of the article.
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