Lighting is one of the major contributors towards annual energy bills, especially for a commercial building. At the same time, lighting is one of the primary factors that influence workplace performance; affecting occupant energy levels and mood. A comprehensive lighting refurbishment is often the way to ensure these diverse but equally important elements of building operations are met.

Though by all accounts they're soon to be history, tungsten filament lamps are still in very widespread use. Resistive loads they most certainly are not. At the instant of switch on, a tungsten filament lamp draws an inrush current that can be anything up to 16 times its normal operating current. To put this into context, a motor started direct on line will normally only draw a peak current of around eight times its full load current. This makes it very clear that switching filament lamps is a particularly severe duty for contactors.

The introduction of Part L of the Building Regulations emphasised the importance of avoiding unnecessary lighting during the times when daylight levels are adequate or when workspaces are unoccupied, and led to the need to look at the choices available for more energy efficient solutions. This, together with the fact that the use of natural daylight can help organisations achieve both significant cost savings and health benefits for occupants of their buildings means that natural daylight solutions are becoming ever more popular.   

Solid state lighting (SSL) is a relatively new technology for the lighting industry. Among this technology are Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), which are becoming increasingly available for a variety of applications such as displays, signs, traffic lights, car head lamps and brake lights, and city beautification. The technology is still in development phase to increase light output while reducing costs, and to provide an efficient warm white light.

There is a lot in the news at the moment about products which are imported from China – and it generally isn’t good news, which makes us more than a little suspicious of any company claiming to be doing it well.

Technology provides the answer to many of the challenges facing lighting control and monitoring, but it’s important to ensure that it’s easy to use. Paul Mans of CP Automated Lighting and Jon Theis of Intelligent Solutions (IS Ltd) explains how new software technologies combined with new ballasts are making life easier for all concerned.

There is still confusion and continuing debate over the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, the European edict designed to bring about increased investment in energy efficiency measures in buildings. The timescale of implementation, methods of energy use calculation, type of certification required, how the rules will be enforced … none of these factors seem to be set in stone yet, at least in the UK.

One of the gripes that’s regularly heard when the topic of office lighting design comes up for discussion is that the CIBSE Lighting Guides LG3(a) and LG7 (2004) inhibit the creativity of the lighting designer. This may well be true in a minority of cases where a lighting designer is actually working on the project, but for the vast majority of commercial office lighting schemes where this is not the case, LG7 is a useful tool for ensuring that people who work in offices reap the benefit of good, effective lighting in the workplace.

Lighting controls are widely applied and accepted today, particularly in office developments, and they are now clearly endorsed by regulations such as Approved Document L2 (A&B) 2006, due to their energy saving capability. In fact it is this specific ability that really established the present lighting controls industry.