Energy-efficient lighting solution for an iconic building

Philips Dynalite recently helped the 140-year-old Sydney Town Hall get energy efficient. The company installed 1700 energy-efficient lights as well as more than 58 km of electrical cabling, 1200 fire sprinklers and 240 solar panels in the iconic and heritage building. The project required a sensitive solution that not only showcased the beauty of the building but respected its historic significance.

The Philips Dynalite system was chosen by the electrical contractor for its strong technical base and its ability to be integrated with other building automation controls. In addition, Dynalite controls had previously been installed in many separate areas of the town hall and had operated together seamlessly between existing and new systems installed on the site.

To conceal much of the 58 km of new electrical wiring and network cabling throughout the building, the electricians were able to use the old gaslight pipes, as well as the old coal chutes, as conduits.

According to Daniel Walker, Philips Dynalite Product Manager, the different lighting groups in the building use a wide range of luminaires and lamp sources, including incandescent, fluorescent, metal halides and LED - all of which require a different style of controller.

The primary function spaces in the building are Centennial Hall and the Peace Hall. In addition to these there are smaller meeting rooms as well as new display rooms for historic artefacts and records relating to the town hall’s history. All around these spaces are normal offices, meeting and amenities rooms. Networked occupancy sensors were also used in offices, meeting rooms, amenities and back-of-house areas to ensure that lighting was not left on unnecessarily, providing a simple, yet effective, energy management solution.

In the Centennial Hall and the Peace Hall, all the Philips Dynalite controls are dual ported to receive messages from differing system control protocol standards (DMX), depending on the event taking place. During normal daytime working hours the controllers respond to DyNet protocol messages sent from the many push-button panels and touch screens as well as the commands from the integrated BMS services. However, when a performance or event is about to commence, an entertainment-style lighting mixing desk using the industry-standard DMX protocol can be plugged in, which allows direct control of the dimmer channels, overriding any messages across the network originating from the DyNet system. This is both a simple and smart solution suiting the different kinds of users that need to interact with the lighting control system. The lighting mixing desk has total control over that part of the performance area.

The crystal chandeliers that hang in the town hall are considered priceless examples of functional art. A criterion for their renovation was to reduce maintenance requirements. To achieve this, Philips Dynalite used leading-edge dimmers with true voltage regulation, high rise time and soft-start capability. The voltage regulation allows the dimmers to absorb any voltage spike caused by an electrical load such as an airconditioner shutting down. Each Philips Dynalite dimmer supports the industry-standard rise time specification which reduces filament noise. The dimmers also support a ‘soft-start’ feature which only allows the filament of a bulb to slowly warm up over a very short period of time when first energised. If a filament receives mains power instantaneously, it will flex hard, weakening the filament further each time the lighting is energised, resulting in shorter life.

The lighting control system has been integrated into the Sydney Town Hall scheduling system via a high-level interface to the BMS. When an event is booked through the BMS, it will automatically set up a sequence of lighting control events eliminating the need for entering the same data in multiple systems. The Philips Dynalite software will set up times and appropriate light levels for the ‘bump in’ - where all the staging works are set up, the actual performance and for the ‘bump out’.

For redundancy and emergencies, Philips Dynalite head-end software runs in the background so that authorised staff can override the system from local control panels allowing staff to make local changes. A touch-screen panel mounted behind the stage displays floor plans of the whole building, which allows for adjustments to any part of the system.

Regardless of what is happening in the town hall, it was critical that only people with the appropriate permissions can adjust the lighting at any time. To accommodate this, various methods of access control to the system have been implemented. PIN codes grant access to certain levels of control options on the touch screens and local panels that can only be enabled using a physical key ensure only the appropriate staff have access.

In addition to the energy-efficient lighting and control systems supplied by Philips Dynalite, the renovations to Sydney Town Hall also included provision of a solar energy system. In what was the largest installation of its kind in the central business district of Sydney, 240 state-of-the art solar photo-voltaic panels were installed on the northern roof of the Town Hall. This solar power will help reduce the building’s environmental footprint and produce 48 kW at peak efficiency.