Maximised energy savings with smart lighting
Lighting can account for up to a third of a commercial building’s energy consumption¹. This, however, can be reduced with the specification of an effective smart lighting solution and without compromising on occupant comfort.
A GLOBAL APPROACH
Atalian is a global leader in facilities management services and employs more than 100,000 people in over 30 countries. Heavily involved to fight against climate change, the group has joined many initiatives to support sustainable development such as the Caring for Climate program from UN Global Compact. In line with this, Atalian recently upgraded one of its main European locations with a ground-breaking new smart lighting solution from Sylvania, which also greatly enhances the interior environment. At the company’s Brussels office there are now Sylvania LED luminaires embedded with the latest generation of SylSmart Connected Building technology, to replace the outdated TL5 fixtures and CFL downlights. The company also wanted to evaluate the ongoing effectiveness of the installation and now runs Sylvania’s M&V (measurement and verification) service to monitor system use in real time. Results show a significant cut in the buildings energy use (84% measured²), while generating an impressive improvement in user satisfaction.
ACCELERATED INSTALLATION
The challenge was to change the existing outdated luminaires with more efficient LED solutions, without causing disruption in a busy building.
Guy Mertens, Managing Director of Atalian, knew that changing conventional light sources to LED was not an easy undertaking, especially when needing to guarantee the energy performance of the planned refurbishment. “When we spoke to Sylvania, they showed us that it was possible to devise a solution that combined LED with intelligent lighting control”. Sylvania also demonstrated this could be achieved without any rewiring or extra cabling thanks to the unique nature and versatility of the SylSmart Connected Building system. Furthermore, this installation has benefited from the Sylvania dedicated web-platform powered by its technology partner Silvair to create all configurations off-site, minimising time on-site and disruption for the occupants.
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THE VALUE OF SMART LIGHTING
Taking advantage of Sylvania Measurement & Verification (M&V) service, which captures real time energy consumption of the existing and the new lighting solution, Atalian monitors the performance of SylSmart solutions and verifies the achieved savings against the target ROI, and the results are stunning: during the period of monitoring, simply switching to LED saved 50% on initial energy costs, while the usage of Sylvania smart controls combining precise motion detection in every fixture, daylight harvesting and task tuning, generated additional savings (69% on top of LED savings) to bring total energy savings to 84% compared to the old installation.
Translated to Carbon emission data, this new installation can therefore reduce around 4t of Co2 on a yearly basis³ without any compromise on occupant comfort levels.
Today, the occupants now witness a general improvement of the quality of light in the working space. The whole installation is now comprised of over 120 Sylvania low flicker rate (0.33%) Rana Neo fixtures. The scheme complies with the latest office lighting standards as all working surfaces are lit with a minimum 500lux, uniformity is above 0.7 with a low glare rating of UGR 15. In addition, Rana Neo emits just 650cd/m2 at 65d to enhance visual comfort for users of PC displays. Also, each luminaire has intelligent control embedded as the system works in a decentralised way. This contrasts with many other lighting control systems which are based on a centralised system architecture. Such a setup could allow a single point of failure to cause whole system to fail. Implementing a new lighting control system can often be a real headache for facility managers, but as demonstrated at Atalian, with SylSmart Connected Building, there’s none of the downtime or disruption associated with this type of project. Abdel Hamroun, Operations Manager from Atalian notes: “We found SylSmart good to install as no additional cabling is required unlike a system that is not integrated into the luminaire – this is unique. Also, we could easily add battery and maintenance-free, kinetic powered wireless wall switches to rooms, to allow users adjust light levels and set scenes, simply and easily.”
FUTURE-PROOF AND SECURE
This new generation of SylSmart Connected Building uses Qualified Bluetooth® mesh and smart sensors within the Sylvania luminaires installed at Atalian’s premises. The system is capable of over the air (OTA) updates to easily maintain the site. With the use of Sylvania web-platform, including digital floorplan, Atalian can today benefit from full flexibility when it decides to redesign the space layout or adapt light levels to specific activities.
SylSmart Connected Building also provides capabilities to future poof the installation by adding an optional gateway to the ecosystem to collect data related to lighting, occupancy and energy, without compromising on security, making this location a new place to demonstrate innovation.
¹ Source: DG Energy, EU Energy in figures, 2012. Reference: LBNL (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
² Measurement performed between September - November 2020
³ estimated value based on OECD Co2/kWh database
