BE A CONTROL FREAKBy Tim Hogan, Acuity Brands Lighting

UNDERSTANDING ENERGY COSTS IN YOUR SCHOOL

BUT THERE ARE SOME CHALLENGES...

“I love what lighting can do for a campus and how it can improve its visual appeal. It can make learning more productive and with the latest technology, it can save a lot of energy at the same time. I’m interested in creating a better space and a better learning environment that costs less to power and maintain.”

-Tim Hogan

THE EDUCATOR’S CHALLENGE

Think about your campus. What percentage of the lighting is controlled at the switch? I mean that a person turns it on or off manually every day. One of the things we know about lighting is that it is left on. One of the greatest ways to save energy, as we all know from yelling at our kids, is to turn the lights off when you leave the room.

THE FACILITY DIRECTOR’S CHALLENGE

A facility director is challenged with improving the campus environment while spending less money. When there is a hall of fame for people who can squeeze the most out of a nickel, a facility chief will be the first person inducted!

One of the things we know is that K12 schools and higher education facilities spend about $14 billion on energy through the course of the year. That’s more than we spend on the school nutrition program. And we also know that at least a third of that energy is wasted.

We are approaching something like $5 billion that is sent to the utility company. Don’t get me wrong, I love utility companies but I would rather keep the money for education.

I want to help facility leaders figure out how we can save money while improving the learning environment. First, we need to understand where the opportunity is. I am a huge fan of using data, analytics and research to understand what efforts we need to take to produce the best results.

IN EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES,

APPROXIMATELY $5 BILLION

IS SPENT ON WASTED ENERGY

1. INEFFICIENT LIGHTING

When I looked at the educational stats from the Department of Energy a couple of things stood out to me. The vast majority of the lighting in the space is linear fluorescent. This is probably not a surprise to anyone.

HOW DO EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES WASTE SO MUCH ENERGY?

85% OF LIGHT SOURCES IN

EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES IS LINEAR

FLUORESCENT

2. LACK OF CONTROL

The other thing that was striking is that 83% of the lighting is not controlled. There is no lighting control other than the light switch.

And I can tell you how many educators and facility leaders I talk to who said “Oh, we have a training program…we have signs…we teach people how to turn the lights off”

I always say how is that working out for you? And they say, “Not too well.” It’s really difficult to get people to change their behavior.

What we know is that more than one-third or about 40% of the energy that is spent in the school is spent on lighting. If you combine heating, cooling, air handling – those three add up to be about what lighting is.

HOW DO EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES WASTE SO MUCH ENERGY?

THERE IS A HUGE OPPORTUNITY JUST BY TURNING OFF THE LIGHTS AND IMPLEMENTING SMART CONTROLS THAT CAN SAVE MONEY, EXTEND LAMP LIFE AND GIVE YOU A LOT OF FLEXIBILITY AND DESIGN.

The Data Logger is about the size of a hockey puck and it has a sensor and a photocell. They come in a case of about 40 and you spread them throughout your campus. The point is to distribute the 40 sensors in a way so that the data you collect is representative of the entire campus. And what happens is it pulls back a lot of data and after three weeks you collect all of the sensors, plug them in and your computer sucks the data out and runs reports. Now you can now see exactly when the lights are on and exactly when the space was occupied.

FIND THE ENERGY LEAKS IN YOUR SCHOOL I encourage people to understand where they are spending their energy and where we want to spend it. I recommend a tool called a Data Logger. And I don’t know how many of you have tried this, but it is a great way for facility leaders to do their homework.

The great news is all the data gets pulled into a simple bar chart that you can give to the boss. This example is from a high school. What you can see is when the spaces were unoccupied completely we would save 42% of the lighting energy just by turning the lights off.

The blue bars represent when the light is on and the red bar shows when the space was occupied. You can see someone turned on the lights in the storage room and forgot to turn them off after they left. This is a huge opportunity for savings.

Another good example here is the locker room. We definitely could save some money there by turning off the lights.

Here is one that was done in a middle school. In this school we see that restroom lights were on all the time and the spaces were unoccupied about a third of the time. The gymnasium has the same problem.

We have done aggregated versions of this Data Logger data to basically six aggregated reports. There is a report for small, medium and large K12 schools and a small, medium and large university building.

What I tell people is you don’t have to do the homework. You can copy and cheat from someone else. It’s going to be just about right, but if you want to show a significant before and after state this is a great project to do.

+ Contact Graybar to save time and receive these helpful cheat sheets for your facilitiy.

Want to find the energy leaks in your school? Do the data logger project. Then install sensors in a few key areas. Then redo the data logger project and now you have results and ROI that you can use when you scale the project across the entire campus. It’s a great way to move forward in a scientific way.

Read on to learn more about sensors »

Over the years, I’m constantly told by facility folks that the sensor project was one of the simplest, fastest, greatest impact and best return on investment projects they’ve done.

But before you take on that sensor project you have to have a goal plan. How do you have a big plan that allows you to focus and act quickly? It’s about finding an application space or technology and testing, piloting and validating that it works. After testing, you scale it across your campus to gain maximum benefits and then come back and solve the next application.

IMPROVING USER EXPERIENCE WITH SENSOR TECHNOLOGY

CREATING A GOOD LIGHTING EXPERIENCE

So the design challenge is determining the right amount of light to use when the space is unoccupied. Traditional sensors can’t see through obstacles or walls and only have simplistic responses.

You want to look for a solution that uses multiple technologies including passive infrared, it may use ultrasonic or microphonic. It may use a combination of those technologies to see what’s happening in the space so that it can respond accordingly.

To create a good lighting experience, we want sensors that enable something more than a simplistic on or off. We are looking for sensors that have multiple stage output.

When the sensor determines it can see, the sensor can turn the lights off. In addition, the sensor can then wait to make sure that people are really gone. Ok, they haven’t been back for 10 minutes now, so I’m going to start setting back the HVAC or close some air handlers.

We need lots of options. One of the things you see when we look at schools, particularly bigger schools are like a small city. There are classrooms, hallways, stairwells, offices, bathrooms, gymnasiums, locker rooms, kitchens, cafeterias and storage closets that may require different kinds of sensor implementations.

So it’s not like you can go buy a truck load of one sensor and you go put them anywhere and have it turn out to be a good experience. You can turn all the lights off, but you might not have the kind of experience that you are hoping to have.

HOW CAN I PROGRAM THE EVENT TO CREATE A BETTER EXPERIENCE?

THREE TYPES OF SENSORS The first is PASSIVE INFRARED and it’s the oldest of the sensor technology. The way to think about this is every facet of the sensor is sending out a beam that covers its angle of the space and it’s almost like a remote point-and-shoot thermometer. It knows the temperature of things within its line of sight. And so it’s happy, it doesn’t care what the temperature is as long as it doesn’t change. As long as the temperature doesn’t change, then it is assuming that nothing is moving in its space.

ULTRASONIC deals with sound airwaves and sound waves to sense when something is in the room. And MICROPHONIC is essentially listening for sounds in the room.

The great thing about controls is that they are very flexible and there are a number of tactics to maximize the control system. A simplistic and inappropriate control solution for a space will result in a bad experience for people who have to work, teach and learn in those spaces.

Passive Infrared

“I see you.”

Ultrasonic“I feel you.”

Microphonic“I hear you.”

UNDERSTANDING WALL, CEILING AND PHOTOCELL SENSOR SOLUTIONS

UNDERSTANDING WALL, CEILING AND PHOTOCELL SENSOR SOLUTIONS

To get started with a sensor project, we ask folks to provide a floor plan to Graybar and our Controls specialist who goes through the whole layout of your building and marks up appropriate sensor technology for the space based on the room size, dimension and whether or not you need more than one sensor.

There are two kinds of sensors mounting solutions, wall mounted and ceiling mounted. The wall mounted is the simplest, but the ceiling mounted gives you a little more flexibility.

UNDERSTANDING WALL SENSOR SOLUTIONS

Wall Mounted Solutions Wall sensors are very simple to install. You simply take the old switch out of the wall, wire up the hot ground and put it back in. It has sensitivity controls baked into it. It’s very controllable. This is where you want to make sure you’ve done the proper testing because reconfiguration involves engaging facility management to recalibrate.

Wall mounted can be added to any space that is up to about 20 X 20 or a typical small office. You typically wouldn’t put them in a bathroom or any kind of small space or closets. They can come in multiple configurations but you have single technology sensors and dual technology sensors for wall sensors.

It’s important to choose the right kind of wall switch for the right kind of space. A copy room with people moving in and out would require a different sensor compared to an office setting where people are sitting which might need a microphonic sensor and a passive infrared.

UNDERSTANDING CEILING MOUNTED SENSOR SOLUTIONS

Ceiling Mounted SolutionsCeiling sensors are typically Passive Infrared and have a much broader spectrum of coverage in odd shape rooms and come in single and double technologies. Some characteristics of ceiling mounted solutions include:

Best choice for radial coverage with small motion

User adjusted time delay

Push-button programming, accessible without tools

Available in low voltage and line voltage models

Integrated photocell available

Typical Coverage Pattern for a Ceiling Sensor Mounted at 10’

UNDERSTANDING PHOTOCELL SENSOR SOLUTIONS

The other important sensor is the photocell. Photocells can be very effective in switching lights off. They are more effective if you have LED sources in the space and it allows you to dim the LED light fixture to compensate for daylight. So if I have a certain amount of lighting contributed by daylight, the photocell tells the fixture to dim the appropriate amount so that the occupant has the right amount of lighting. Photocells recognize light changing and have algorithms programmed in them so when a cloud passes over, they don’t instantly turn the lights up to full bright.

This algorithm recognizes that the lights have been dim for only a few seconds. “It will give you a few seconds before start easing up the ramp speed”.

It does that change of light intensity up and down in a thoughtful way. There is programming so that it’s not distracting to the user.

I was in an older department store where there were a lot of skylights, lights and photocells. The lights were turning on and off – like a really bad concert. It was very distracting. Make sure you have a photocell that is able to adapt and provide a very comfortable experience.

MORE SENSOR SOLUTIONS

X Point SensorsA very exciting new technology Acuity has is called X Point. These sensors are wireless and powerless. The wall switch itself requires no lines to it. It requires no power to it. The act of flipping the switch creates enough energy to generate the wireless signal to the other equipment in the room to take action.

X Point is now available and is shipping and is optimized for a space where wireless is ideal. We have five different communication protocols for our sensor offers. The occupancy sensors and the photocells are also wireless and require no power. They get their power from the ambient light during the day.

Fixture Mount Sensor

Embedded Sensor

Pole Mounted

Sensor

WHEN SENSORS GO OUTSIDE

For some reason when you go outside, we start sensors proximity sensors. It’s not very attractive, but these sensors can be bolted on. It works, but newer fixture designs have the sensors embedded.

The Pole Mounted Sensor is mounted at a lower level like a parking garage. Parking garages have sensors independent from the fixtures and they recognize that there is activity on the floor. The sensor will turn the light on for a whole zone or floor.

We don’t want to just light up the person walking through the space. The boss says that’s the equivalent of lighting up the victim and not the perpetrator. So that sensor needs to understand that I’m lighting up the whole space so that the occupant can feel comfortable and see and know that they are safe for the entire floor.

It’s all about choosing the right technology for your space.

One of the things we know from our data studies is that stairwells and corridors are mostly empty and unoccupied but the lights are always on. While working on a lighting project for a large university, we chose the Lithonia Lighting WL solution for the stairwells.

It’s an LED option with an integrated sensor and when the space is unoccupied the luminaire can be configured to operate at 10%.

NEED A QUICK WIN? CHECK OUT YOUR STAIRWELLS

CHECK OUT YOUR STAIRWELLS

We know that stairways are unoccupied 95% of the times. So for 95% of the time I am using 10% of the energy. The beautiful thing about this solution is that when the third floor stairwell becomes occupied the luminaire immediately lights up because LED is an instant source. It goes from off to full bright instantly. Even a fluorescent takes up to 90 seconds to become full bright.

This fixture on the third floor then sends the signal out to its neighbors on the second and fourth floors and those fixtures become full bright at the same time. So as I’m travelling up or down the stairs, the lights are coming on ahead of me and I’m never walking in a dark space.

This is a good example of how Smart Sensors integrated with a layer of modern lighting technology can create a space that works better, costs less and maintenance is not an issue because of the long-life of LEDs.

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The bottom line is you can save up to 90% of the energy 97% of the time. At the university the payback was less than two years and they it be saving $30,000 a year after that.

THANKS FOR READING!I hope you enjoyed this quick primer on lighting controls and how to be a control freak in your facility. As you can see it’s not hard to save energy in your facility you just have to start somewhere. And installing lighting controls is an easy, cost-effective place to start.

Get a free consultation and learn to be a control freak!Visit graybar.com/control-freak or call 1-800-GRAYBAR.

ABOUT GRAYBAR

Graybar is a leading distributor of electrical, communications, data networking and security products and services. Through decades of experience and vast resources, we developed Graybar PowerSmart® to provide energy efficient and intelligent strategies and products designed to deliver value for each of our customers.

ABOUT ACUITY BRANDS

Acuity Brands is the North American market leader and one of the world’s leading providers of innovative lighting systems. With a comprehensive portfolio and proven expertise in indoor and outdoor luminaires, controls and daylighting, Acuity provides customers with integrated, intelligent solutions from one company.

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