Setsquare takes control of lighting in Whitehall

Setsquare motion sensors installed between the fins of suspended luminaires in a Government building in central London have significantly reduced carbon-dioxide emissions by nearly 45 t a year.
Presence-based lighting control is dramatically reducing energy wastage and carbon emissions at 22 Whitehall in central London, occupied by the Cabinet Office. The system installed is SetSquare’s InfraPOD. Lighting typically accounts for up to 40% of total energy use in an office building, so turning off lights that are unnecessarily on quickly has a significant impact. Facilities-management company Ecovert FM commissioned Setsquare to survey, design, make and install a flexible presence-based lighting-control system suited to the specific requirements of this building. Since the control system was installed, the energy usage of the building has been reduced by 60%, reports Ecovert, giving an annual cost saving of £6268 and a reduction of almost 45 t of carbon dioxide emissions a year. The previous lighting scheme consisted of 488 high-frequency luminaires that had been specified for their energy efficiency. The 416 luminaires in the office area were on for 19 h a day. A further 72 luminaires in the lift lobbies were on continuously. These luminaires are now controlled by signals from passive infrared occupancy sensors. The system also includes a control unit with switching time delay and photocell adjustment, enable up to 10 low-profile detector heads to be linked to once controller using low-voltage 2-core screen cable. By ensuring that lights are on only where body movement is sensed and when there is insufficient natural light, energy costs have been reduced substantially. The sensor heads are mounted between the diffuser fins on the suspended luminaires and can detect hand movement on a keyboard or mouse. To provide higher sensitivity around the edge of the detection zone, additional detectors have been installed. One feature of the system is to turn off lighting in corridors if no-one is in adjacent offices. The lift lobbies face a central atrium, so the InfraPOD controller with a dual relay is used to achieve twin light-level switching, using the photocell to take into account the effect of daylight. Photocell controllers are used around the windows on the front of the building to switch off one or two rows of luminaires when there is sufficient natural daylight.
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