Commercial Architecture October 2016 - 12

FEATURE controls ily dimmable from full light to minimal light at a reasonable cost, and they have instant restrike without any waiting time or warmup time, according to Forest's Jian Ni. "LEDs do not have the issues of requiring expensive fluorescent or HID dimming ballasts, limited operating temperature ranges, or limited dimming ranges that are found in legacy light sources," he said. "LEDs are quickly becoming a default light source on many projects, due largely to their energy-saving properties and expanding options for performance, color tuning, and building integration. As customers get more familiar with the benefits LEDs offer, they also have higher expectations for light quality and performance, and a strong desire to recreate the kind of dimming performance traditionally available with incandescent lights," said Lutron's Lind. STANDARDS Most control and automation systems today rely on proprietary technology, but APIs (application program interface) allow some of them to communicate with each other and with existing HVAC-control automation systems. Industry-wide standards are something that will take some time to establish. Regarding standards, Carol Jones of Enlighted observed, "In a highly disrupted industry with an explosion of innovation, the most important criteria are interoperability and upgradability. There will be multiple standards across different types of hardware and software technologies. The early prevalence of a particular type of standard or protocol is not a predictor of what will ultimately become most common, and it's certain that there will be parallel paths and an ongoing evolution. As the building industry evolves toward the IoT, it becomes increasingly important to have multi-disciplinary collaboration. The buildings, energy, and real estate industries should be working closely with the software industry to ensure the best outcomes for owners and occupants." "Daintree Networks champions the use of open standards-based protocols to enable the adoption of control technologies for commercial buildings," Derek Proudian said. "An open standard is critical to enabling the Enterprise Internet of Things. Today, the ZigBee protocol is the most prevalent open wireless standard with over 1,500 conIn residential applications in mix-usage buildings, dimming of light levels in common areas when they are unoccupied could result in major savings in energy and utility expense. Courtesy Joshua Zinder Architecture + Design tures, centered around life span. You reduced the life of the lamp the nected devices, and this number continues to grow. However, other more you switched it on and off. That's not the case with LEDs," said standards and industry bodies have emerged such as Thread, TCLA, Legrand's Smillie. and others, and we keep up with all of them to determine which "In addition," he said, "LEDs have significantly increased the technologies, if any, we should add to our roadmap. There are also lighting-power efficiency of fixtures so there's less of a worry that you stringent industry standards such as ASHRAE 90.1 and California's are providing enough light in a space with new stringent energy-effi- Title 24 that require increasing use of controls and automation to ciency requirements by energy codes. LEDs can also be dimmed eas- create efficiencies and reduce CO2 emissions." ily and provide better controllability, color rendering capability, and "The flexibility provided by the use of open-standards-based plat- higher lumen outputs. The benefits include little to no startup delay, forms will increase the adoption rate of control technologies and is issues with flickering, and reduction of lamp life." critical as part of the Enterprise Internet of Things. As this becomes "Control- and automation-technology has grown tremendously more pervasive, you will see LED lighting and control technology with the explosion of LEDs, largely enabled by wireless technologies adoption increase at the same rate as both are merged into one prod- and the software industry," Carol Jones of Enlighted agreed. "This uct and available on a common platform," he added. combination allows users to make their buildings truly intelligent, by "One of the biggest challenges is how quickly new technologies geo-locating sensored lighting fixtures in relationship to the floor and capabilities are creating more complexity in lighting controls plan. Virtual control and data collection becomes possible using and automation. In some of these emerging capabilities, like color browsers and mobile apps and the applications can be extended be- tuning, there are no dominant codes or sequences of operations for yond building systems into mission and business-oriented values." applications yet. This is also the case with incorporating lighting into Another reason LEDs are gaining acceptance is that they are eas12 COMMERCI A L A RCHI T EC T URE OCTOBER 2016 commercialarchitecturemagazine.com IoT and data-rich systems. The compatibility concern is around http://www.commercialarchitecturemagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Commercial Architecture October 2016