BEG has installed a comprehensive, energy-saving lighting controls system at the Dyson School of Design Engineering, which the maintenance team can control themselves via their smartphones.
BEG Lighting Controls was selected by ICL to provide a user-friendly system which could be maintained by their own maintenance department and meet the lighting control standards required by the research university. BEG worked with mechanical and electrical consultants, Buro Happold, who were tasked to oversee the project and ensure that the system achieved the best solution for ICL.
ICL’s main criteria was that the project had to result in energy cost savings for the university for the various areas of the Dyson School department and take advantage of any natural daylight. This included the teaching rooms, laboratories, offices, corridors, stairwells, toilets and storerooms. BEG Lighting Controls and Buro Happold worked on the layout of the lighting as well as the level of light and type of control required for these areas.
Tom Greenrod, specification director at BEG Lighting Controls, says, “The design brief from the Imperial College London meant we had to carefully specify lighting controls products for each area which differed greatly from room to room, so this was by no means a ‘one size fits all’ solution. It was imperative that the lighting was mostly switched on in the offices and teaching rooms during working hours and that it could be controlled to reduce lighting levels when the natural daylight was brighter. For the laboratories, we used DALI photocells instead of occupancy sensors.
“Areas such as the corridors, stairwell, toilets and storerooms did not need to be fully lit and lighting only needed to be switched on once our occupancy sensors sensed there was a person or persons in the room.”
The luminaires selected on the project were DALI dimmable and daylight harvesting was to be achieved mainly for the light fittings adjacent to the windows. For these areas, the BEG DAA4G occupancy sensor was chosen, as this sensor could be programmed so that the window luminaires were dimmed by 25% to the main room. If the sensor’s photocell detected any change in the level of natural daylight, then all luminaires would adjust accordingly.
A two-gang retractive switch would control the whiteboard and the main classroom lights. Programming of the sensor was achieved using a smart phone with the BEG Lighting Controls app and infra-red adaptor. This app also allows remote programming of all the DALI sensors used on the project.
