Houston Landmark Upgrades Its Look With Exterior Lighting
CenterPoint Energy Tower, at 1111 Louisiana Street in downtown Houston, started out as a generic black glass building in 1973. In 1996, the headquarters for CenterPoint Energy, Inc., underwent a major renovation, which established the tower as a landmark in the Houston skyline.
A 90-foot, six-story cap, affectionately named the “top hat,” with an eye-catching, circular hole cut in its middle was added and lined in white lights to highlight the building’s distinct architectural features. Occasionally, those lights were changed to red, green, or blue to reflect certain holidays.
In addition to the new top, the renovation included a reconstructed base with granite paneling to add a more modern, architectural feel to the structure.
Energy Efficient Upgrade
In 2015, the CenterPoint Energy Tower facilities team decided they wanted to upgrade the lighting system with high-output, high-efficiency LED fixtures. The requirement: the fixtures needed to generate enough power to replace the building’s 1000-watt metal halide flood lights without increasing energy costs.
CenterPoint Energy’s corporate vision and strategy focuses on ensuring safe, reliable, efficient and environmentally responsible energy delivery by using new and innovative technology to enhance performance. CenterPoint Energy also wanted to be able to quickly and easily change exterior lighting color schemes to reflect different seasons and promotional awareness campaigns.
To achieve these goals, Dyna Drum HO QW and Rebel Bar HIP65 fixtures with the ART SSC Controller from Acclaim Lighting were selected for the project.
Specified to up-light the roof’s unique architectural structure, the Dyna Drum HO QW is a high-output, outdoor-rated, quad-color LED flood fixture featuring an adjustable yoke, on-board digital display. Its 100-277VAC internal power supply consumes only 237 watts per fixture. The quad-color chip performs at 6000K and provides improved color mixing and more saturated colors over single-source LED fixtures.
Dyna Drum HO QW provides 5736 total lumens, maintaining 70 percent of them at 120,000 hours. This outdoor, LED flood fixture has beam angles of 10 degrees standard, with 20-, 40- and 60-degree spread lens options for large-scale façade and area flood lighting.
Selected to graze the side slope of the roof, the Rebel Bar HIP65 is a high-power, linear LED wash fixture, available in RGB or white. Each fixtures consumes 40 watts, and is individually addressable, with a built-in power supply and linkable power/data system. The IP65-rated Rebel Bar HIP65 has beam angles of 10 degrees standard, with 25-, 40- and 10 X 35, and 10 X 60-degree spread lens options.
BMS Integration
To coordinate the building’s lighting scheme, the solid-state ART SSC lighting controller with no moving parts was specified. Designed for permanent installations, the secure and low-maintenance installation control solution requires only minimal power. It is designed to operate without a computer. All operating and programming is done through its web 2.0 interface. Connected to a browser, the ART SSC becomes a 1024-channel lighting controller, complete with a command-line interface for fast programming. It features 256 scenes with programmable fade and hold times.
The ART SSC controller was connected to the BMS system for lighting system control from the building maintenance office. This allows seasonal and event-based color scheme changes to be quickly programmed and implemented throughout the year, as well as static color sets deployed on a time schedule to automatically activate lighting schemes for events and holidays.