From Pokemon to Tiffany's to LEED to DALI - Illuminating ...

Control device manufacturers have ignored the marketing
potential in retrofitting. The concept of bi-level
lighting is that the greatest energy waste is the use
of lighting when there’s no one in occupancy to use it.
We can easily dim down those sources, rather than
Wouldn’t it be smart
to retrofit all multi-headed
parking lot luminaires
with an OTA sensing relay
that turns on
individual units as we
need them, rather
than a circuit at a time
turn them off, with the technology now available, and
justify it economically. I learned a lesson the other day
when one of my clients pointed out that an energy
conservation payback of seven years didn’t seem so
attractive several years ago, but if you view it as a
return on investment of 14 percent, it’s a better
return than you can get elsewhere. People are advised
to pay off mortgages and credit card debit with interest
rates much lower than 14 percent as the “best
investment you can make.”
In parts of Europe, where some energy rates have
been over $. 20 per kWh for years, public corridors in
apartment houses and small hotels have little push
button time switches that give you about 30 seconds
to get to your door before the lights go out. The race
is on as soon as you leave the elevator and push the
little button.
I attended a Fire Safety Directors Assoc. of Greater
New York conference recently where the topic was
“Safety in Public Spaces, and the Evacuation of High
Rise Buildings,” a very appropriate topic now, in the
wake of the 9/11 mass murder at the WTC. Our safety
and evacuation systems are primitive, the standards for
them go back almost half a century, and except for public
buildings in California, and in theatres, ships and airplanes,
there’s nothing better being used.
For instance, 44 inch wide code approved stairways
are too narrow for two people to go down abreast, let
alone to allow a fire fighter to go up the stairway at the
same time. Hand rails are often in the wrong place,
stairs and treads are hard to see and the lighting is
quite inadequate, especially for seniors.
The ANSI A-117.1 committee has a Perception,
Illumination and Signage Task Group considering an
increase illumination requirements in stairways, to a
minimum level of 10 fc, with controls to reduce the
level to a NFPA LIfe Safety Code minimum of 2 fc when
www.iesna.org
the stairs are empty. Ironically, the greatest budget
expense in most countries today is for social services,
especially health care. Each year, accidents on stairs by
seniors alone are costing us much more than the cost
of all the new stairways that are being built.
Unfortunately, we learn of our mistakes in construction
after something goes terribly wrong, and then it’s
too expensive to retrofit existing buildings to make
them safer. Hopefully, something will be done to protect
our ever increasing aging population with safer levels of
illumination.
Here’s my wish list for new controlled luminaires;
—A single, large, circular LED traffic light with control
to change the color from green to yellow to red, ad
infinitum.
—An outdoor luminaire that dims when there’s no
pedestrian or vehicular traffic detected.
—A control for a luminaire, commercial or residential,
that responds to a voice message to raise or dim
the light output on command.
There are others, but when these far-out control
devices malfunction, who’s going to repair them
Maybe that’s one solution to our high unemployment
rate.
LD+A/January 2003 5