Different types of dimming curves may be incorporated in dimmers, software for lighting control systems, and output devices like LED drivers irrespective of the actual protocol used to communicate between them.

Let’s talk about dimming and dimming curves, and a variety of attributes that you should consider, inquire about, then specify what you actually want.

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s (PNNL) Ruth Taylor recently contributed an article to LD+A Magazine examining lessons learned during a two-year evaluation of connected lighting systems.

Rebate fulfillment firm BriteSwitch recently stated that about 20% of commercial lighting rebate programs are offering additional or bonus rebate opportunities.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Interior Lighting Campaign is undergoing a fresh launch as the Integrated Lighting Campaign in June 2020. The program’s core goal of market transformation is the same, with many of the same services and benefits to participants, but the promoted suite of technologies is now going beyond LED adoption toward integrated systems. The Lighting Controls Association is proud to support this program as a member of its Organizing Committee and an inaugural Supporter.

The Lighting Controls Association is proud to announce the latest offerings in lighting controls from industry-leading manufacturers. Check them out!

Craig DiLouie, LC, CLCP, education director of the Lighting Controls Association and a freelance lighting journalist, recently interviewed Gilles Abrahamse, Vice President/GM Digital Luminaire Components – Acuity Brands Lighting, about connected lighting for an article that will be published in the August issue of tED Magazine. Here’s the transcript.

Writing for the NEMA blog, Michael Poplawski, Principal Investigator for Connected Lighting Systems Research, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, says connected lighting systems have a potential to provide a range of electric grid services. PNNL is now actively investigating these capabilities.

Craig DiLouie, LC, CLCP, education director of the Lighting Controls Association and a freelance lighting journalist, recently interviewed Roger Karner, President, Signify US, about connected lighting for an article that will be published in the August issue of tED Magazine. Here’s the transcript.

BOM Magazine recently published an article advising building owners and managers about how to select the right tunable-white lighting solution for their buildings. Written by Craig DiLouie, LC, CLCP, education director for the Lighting Controls Association, the article covers applications and benefits, theory of operation, types, typical approaches, protocols, and application considerations.

Lighting Controls Systems may use a wide variety of lighting controls wiring to connect their systems throughout a project. How that wiring, which may use multiple conductors, connects from device to device is an important component to identify and specify on any project. A termination is the end of a conductor and it may facilitate proper communication between devices or help avoid connecting the wrong conductors to a device. Terminations will sometimes also have very specific landing points for its conductors known as “pinouts,” which maintain a consistent connection pattern for all conductors. This article discusses common terminations that a Lighting Controls Designer may come across.

In this engaging guest post, Steve Mesh describes the lessons learned from the “Living Lab,” an ambitious installation of networked lighting controls in an existing building.

Reducing initial cost by an estimated 20-25 percent, rebates remain a strong incentive for investing in energy-efficient lighting and controls. In 2020, significant rebate opportunities are widely available for LED lighting and controls, including growing availability of rebates for networked controls.

Lighting Controls Designers work with many different types of documents, some of which may be created by the designer, some by the manufacturer, and others by third parties. This paper will quickly describe each document, why it is used, and who is often responsible for creating the document. There are four design phases in which these documents are utilized…

The U.S. economy grew by 2.2% in 2019 and is expected to slow to 2% in 2020, according to the most recent forecast released by the Federal Open Market Committee Meeting on December 11, 2019. The slowdown in 2019-20 is considered a byproduct of the trade war. A major contributor to the economy is construction, and the outlook for construction spending in 2020-21 is positive but lower than 2019. The AIA’s semi-annual Consensus Construction Forecast, a survey of the nation’s leading construction forecasters, is projecting 1.5% growth in nonresidential construction spending in 2020 and 1% in 2021.

“Over the past decade, I have taught many classes on networked lighting control systems (NLCs)… Over the years, I’ve seen some recurring themes in terms of questions asked by attendees, such as…”

Whether it be an office building with a smart Building Management System (BMS), a dynamic color changing bridge, or a lobby with an interactive multimedia experience, architectural lighting controls systems need integration. A lighting controls systems integrator provides a unique service for lighting controls by identifying and overseeing the devices necessary for the unique needs of the project’s design. Some projects don’t use a dedicated lighting controls integrator and some projects experience challenges without the aid of a dedicated integrator. For project success, a lighting controls designer should know when to onboard and specify an integrator.

In a recent issue of LD+A, Gaurav Agarwal, Product Manager for Hubbell Control Solutions, talks about how the proliferation of intelligent lighting and the Internet of Things has expanded the capabilities of what lighting can do, it’s more essential now than ever to ask the client the right questions to determine the best overall solution.

In this blog post by Eaton, the company identifies and address four misconceptions about connected lighting.

In a recent issue of LD+A, consultant Rich Schuett talks about how the proliferation of intelligent lighting and the Internet of Things has broadened lighting’s value proposition, but also made targeting the right decision-maker more complex.

In this guest post by lighting designer C. Webster Marsh, he discusses alternatives to using DMX512 to control tunable-white lighting.

The North America smart lighting market reached a value of $2.4 Billion in 2018. Looking forward, the market is projected to reach a value of $7.4 Billion by 2024, registering a CAGR of 19.6% from 2019-2024.

Next month, the 2016 version of ANSI/ASHRAE/IES 90.1, Energy Standard for Buildings except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, takes effect as the national energy reference standard, based on a 2018 Department of Energy (DOE) ruling. By February 2020, all states must adopt a commercial building energy code at least as stringent as the standard, or justify why they cannot comply.

DMX512-controlled tunable dynamic white luminaires are luminaires that use DMX512 controls to change their correlated color temperature (CCT) on demand, which provides a dramatic design tool to the modern lighting designer. These luminaires are different from dynamic color changing luminaires because instead of using colored LEDs, they use a mix of white LEDs such as warm white, neutral white, and cool white. When these hues are mixed at different intensities, the overall delivered CCT of the luminaire changes. It is very important to have a robust controls system specifically designed and programmed for the control of tunable dynamic white luminaires. Any compatible controller will control a DMX512 tunable white luminaire and can adjust from one hue to another, but that’s only half the story …

Last year, the Lighting Controls Association published the first version of a generic Troubleshooting Guide for Networked Lighting Control Systems. This guide is primarily meant to address issues that may arise with Networked Lighting Control (NLC) systems. There are plenty of things that differentiate one vendor’s NLC system from those made by other vendors. Different systems have different UIs (user interfaces), and a specific NLC system may or may not have exactly the same features or benefits as any other system. Having said that, enough similarities exist to have made the creation of this manufacturer-agnostic Troubleshooting Guide worthwhile.

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) and the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) recently published ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2019, Energy Efficiency Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings. This edition includes more than 100 changes from the 2016 version, covering administrative and enforcement, commissioning, mechanical, and lighting. For lighting, the new version adjusts interior power allowances, updates several control requirements, and introduces a simplified compliance method for office, school, and retail buildings.

We’re still finding ways to take full advantage of daylight’s benefits. It’s a challenging issue, leaving daylight in an uneasy battle with electric light for brightening our spaces – ignored or underrated in lighting designs, and poorly controlled to boot. Fortunately, this is starting to change. Along with the growing awareness of the WELL, LEED, and BREEAM building standards — which incorporate a variety of recommendations for daylight exposure and control — and acceptance of building codes that support more use of daylight harvesting, there’s a greater incentive to embrace daylight as part of the overall lighting design of a space.

C. Webster Marsh, Designer with lighting design firm Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design, provides the final installment on his series of articles about dimming and lighting control protocols. In this last installment, he teams up with HLB’s Adam Levine to tackle digital control protocols, covering when and how to specify it, and how to overcome some of the challenges.

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recently published guides on how to design buildings that achieve net-zero energy consumption without compromising quality.
Building upon previous guides targeting deep energy savings, the first two new guides were developed in partnership with the American Institute of Architects, Illuminating Engineering Society, and U.S. Green Building Council, and target K-12 and small to medium office buildings.

Robert J. Garra Jr., PE of CannonDesign recently contributed an article to CONSULTING-SPECIFYING ENGINEER, in which he makes a case for the importance of emphasizing controls in a quality lighting design, while laying out principles for application.

B2B research firm Accountability Information Management, Inc. (AIM) recently published a comprehensive new report, Quality is Key to Being a Player in Lighting Control Specifications. Or is it?

By early 2020, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) is expected to release a new version of the BACnet building automation system protocol. BACnet Secure Connect, or BACnet/SC, brings this popular open industry standard into the Internet of Things (IoT) age by enabling the easy and secure transfer of large volumes of data.

Space utilization and indoor positioning are key non-energy benefits of networked lighting controls, writes Steve Mesh, adding that they can provide additional value in a project beyond simple energy savings.

In August 2019, the University of Oregon published a whitepaper, “The Impact of Lighting and Views in the Workplace of the Future.” The paper concludes that daylighted spaces with controlled lighting and views can improve occupant well-being, workplace productivity, and satisfaction by positively influencing various physiological and psychological processes. Lighting and views also impact property value and employee recruitment and retention, the researchers said.

“Delivering lighting controls is the work of the membership of the Lighting Controls Association. But who is responsible for commissioning them?” writes Thomas Paterson, Director of Lux Populi.

In this article, C. Webster Marsh, designer with Horton Lees Brogden, discusses the topic of interfaces between incompatible devices designed to different protocols, and how to get the best results.

Tunable-white LED lighting offers highly efficient general illumination combined with dimming and the ability to tune correlated color temperature (CCT) from warm- to cool-white. A strong potential application is classrooms, where teachers can set lighting/visual conditions to support classroom activities. In May 2019, the Department of Energy (DOE) published a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) report evaluating a trial installation of tunable-white lighting systems at three classrooms in an elementary school in Folsom, California.

This article by Michael Shulman, Principal Engineer, Lighting for UL, describes how the changing lighting control landscape presents new challenges for emergency lighting control.

As the commercial lighting industry continues its steady move towards more advanced controls and lighting solutions, for many experts, all signs point to networked lighting controls. And when it comes to truly intelligent, flexible lighting with non-energy benefits, the future could be Luminaire Level Lighting Controls (LLLCs). A subset of networked lighting controls, LLLCs include integrated sensors and control in each luminaire. To better understand this trend, Anne Curran, Senior Program Manager for the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance’s Luminaire Level Lighting Controls initiative, interviewed Steve Mesh, Principal at Lighting Education & Design. Here’s the transcript.