Lighting controls drive down energy costs

Screen Australia, the Commonwealth Government agency, moved into a new office at 45 Jones street, Ultimo, with an aim to increase staff comfort and reduce operating costs. The building was used as a wool store until the 1950s before being converted to premium offices in 2005.

The building has a 4.5 star NABERS energy rating and the fit-out designed by Hassell is light, bright and takes advantage of the high cathedral-like roof space. Energy-efficient LED lighting is used throughout the office with further efficiencies gained from presence detectors.

Lighting controls

At Screen Australia, the move to the new Ultimo office was made under strict budgetary provisions. When Aston Consulting pared the design brief down to its essential elements, they realised that the desired functionality of the lighting control system did not revolve around set operating scenes as a networked solution would do, but rather around the need to have the right lighting available in the immediate area only when users were present. 

Aston Consulting worked closely with mySmart to design the lighting controls, and by using mySmartSensors, the company was able to implement a solution that reacts to the movement and flow of people around the Screen Australia office ensuring that the minimum amount of energy is used. If no-one is present then the lights are switched off and no energy is being consumed. The time delay between when the last person leaves an area and when the sensor switches off the lights is also adjustable from 3 seconds up to 99 minutes. To reduce energy consumption even further with daylight harvesting and modern high-performance photocell sensors the lights can also be automatically dimmed to be operating using the minimum amount of energy possible.

Responsive vs predictive lighting control

The biggest difference between presence-based and preset scene-based lighting is that a scene-based lighting control system is designed as a prediction of what lighting the occupants of a space will require. Responsive lighting control, as the name suggests, is designed to respond quickly and effectively to changing occupancy levels and users can easily fine-tune the programming of the sensors if needed.

Installation

mySmartSensors either directly connect to one light or control a limited number of lights in the immediate area. This reduces investment in materials and labour, especially that spent on control cables. Heritage buildings like 45 Jones Street can increase the savings even further as costs for traditional cabling can easily blow out due to the difficulty in running cables and complying with heritage order restrictions.

Reporting: do you really use it?

Many networked lighting control solutions offer the ability to output performance and diagnostic reports; however, for most smaller buildings and tenancies they are either not required or seldom used. For Screen Australia, given the relatively compact floor plan, they decided that such detailed reporting didn’t suit their needs.

Payback period

As noted previously, Screen Australia was under strict budgetary restrictions in its move to the 45 Jones street offices. The mySmartSensors presence detectors cost Screen Australia less than 60% of an equivalent networked solution. Given that the energy-efficiency savings will be very similar, the payback period in this case is reduced significantly.

Project details

Type of building: Heritage commercial offices
Fit-out architect: Hassell
Electrical consultant: Aston Consulting
Electrical contractor: EDV
Fit-out contractor: Sherington project management
Project manager: Hamilton Projects