As well as being the home of the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, this magnificent 11th Century castle is also open to the general public, so the provision of an effective emergency lighting system is vital.

However, this requirement had to be accomplished without affecting the overall ambience of the building, and, according to Leslie Wheeler of consultants Wilson & Partners, aesthetics played an important part in the decision to use static inverters: “Rather than installing lots of self-contained emergency luminaires, which would have been out of keeping, we opted for the static inverters as they enabled a wide variety of existing tungsten light fittings to function as emergency lighting during a mains power failure.”

Providing instantaneous switchover on mains failure, the static inverters convert DC power from built-in standby batteries to 230V AC 50Hz single-phase power.

Initially, two static inverters (a 2kVA unit with vented nickel cadmium batteries and a 4kVA unit with sealed lead acid batteries) were installed in the main switch room at Arundel Castle to power the chandeliers and wall lights in the Baron’s Hall and the Picture Gallery.

These static inverters performed so well that the same approach was adopted for the Drawing Room, with two compact 500VA units subsequently being installed to provide emergency lighting. In the latest stage of the project, the 500VA compact static inverter has also been specified for the Library, which is one of the most impressive rooms in the castle.

All installation work was carried out by the Hove branch of EDF Energy Contracting.

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