Local Energy Standards Play Role in Wireless Lighting Control Systemstest

By Dave Lubach, Associate Editor

August 2014

Standards established by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) influence a manager’s decision to install wireless lighting controls. ASHRAE 90.1, which imposes limits on the amount of lighting power installed in a building, and California’s Title 24 building energy-efficiency standard both offer managers useful guidelines.

“With energy codes coming on as strong as they are, there’s a whole push through Title 24 for new buildings with demand response,” Ericson says. “A quick way to do demand response would be to put in a wireless system to shut off lights uniformly. You can affect that change pretty quickly if the utility offers it.”

Title 24 and standards established by groups such as the National Electrical Manufacturers Association guide managers to include dimming capability in newly installed lighting systems.

“They’re pretty much requiring us to dim lighting now as a byproduct of some of the requirements,” Ericson says. “They don’t say, ‘Dim it’ in some of the language, but they say things like, ‘In an office, you have to control it at four different levels.’ The daylighting zones have gotten bigger, so those require dimming. And once we’ve made that decision to dim, then LEDs pop right up to the top as a viable option. I don’t have to do anything special to dim them because they are already natively dimmable by the drivers.”