As demands mount for institutional and commercial facilities to reduce their energy use and operate more sustainably, building owners and facility executives continue the search for opportunities to upgrade buildings and systems to achieve these goals. So, when an energy retrofit includes new lighting with integrated, networked occupancy sensors, owners and managers can take advantage of technology advances to integrate lighting and HVAC controls in ways that benefit the bottom line and the environment.
The growing interest in control system integration is driven in part by the evolution of lighting technology in the last decade and the evolving needs of facilities. Lighting retrofits became popular projects for facilities to undertake when LED lighting became available and reliable.
“For the last decade, LED retrofits have delivered savings for utilities and building owners,” Lenin Nock, senior technical manager with the Design Lights Consortium, told attendees of a panel discussion at the recent AHR Expo. “Now, with efficient LEDs already installed in facilities, utility programs need new sources of energy savings.”
New-generation networked lighting controls (NLC) can help owners and managers with embracing the next phase of lighting technology, he said, but adding they can seem expensive compared to the relatively small amount of energy they can save when the only load they control is LED lights. One critical feature of NLCs is opening the door to greater savings.
“They provide powered, networked occupancy sensors throughout a space," Nock said. “NLC sensors can inform HVAC controls to lower the temperature setpoints by a few degrees in all unoccupied areas. In suitable buildings, lighting retrofits with NLC-HVAC integration can save more than 20 percent of the whole building energy load.”
Nock adds that energy savings from systems integration can be attractive to building owners, especially those with facilities larger than 50,000 square feet that already have a building automation system.
“Building automation systems to coordinate different building systems is the wave of the future,” he said. “Integrating lighting controls with HVAC controls is a good place to practice building automation in the future across more building systems,” including security, access control fire protection and elevators.
To support the integration of NLCs and building automation systems, the consortium recently introduced an NLC-HVAC Integration Toolkit that is designed to connect lighting to HVAC controls and other operational systems. The toolkit contains:
“Part of all of this is ensuring we have a unified system so that things work with each other,” Ron Bernstein, CEO of RBCG Consulting, told session attendees. “Oftentimes, you do a siloed project with the HVAC and mechanical in one bucket and electrical and lighting in another bucket, and they never talk with each other. They're not working with the operator, and you're not going to get that harmonization benefit.
“All of that has to play together in a harmonized environment. We want to maximize the efficiency outcome by looking at both sides of the coin and trying to reduce the usual fingerpointing.”
The integration toolkit is designed to help owners and managers work with all interested parties to put together the needed pieces of the traditionally complex controls system upgrade.
“It’s going to help you if you need to select pieces of equipment, understanding what to select and how to select it,” said Matthew Turk, senior associate with Newcomb and Boyd. “You're also going to have a better understanding of how you're going to have to deploy your network, whether it's a wireless network or a wired network.
“Then, if you're going to deploy a network, how are you going to secure your network? And how are you going to secure devices on your network? There's information here that can help you potentially.” The toolkit also seeks to address the entirety of the project, including the commissioning process to ensure system operation and reliability
"You’ve seen traditional delivery of HVAC or lighting,” Turk said. “You have a commissioning agent. They're going to come out, they're going to check it, they're going to make sure it functions right. If you're sharing data between the various systems, you can have that system programmed and finished, but you haven't necessarily programmed the other system, which is going to consume the data outside of it. What you can do with this framework is you can help define this activity for that integration to occur.
“If we do all that correctly, we get a building everybody's going to be happy with because we're going to get the experience the owner wanted when they defined their standards or their owner programming requirements at the very beginning. Everybody walks off the project and everybody's happy, and that's the best part of it.”
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
