Controls

The University of California, Davis has signed co-exclusive license agreements with Wattstopper and Axis Technologies Inc. to commercialize inventions that reduce the cost and increase the reliability of daylight harvesting systems–control systems that automatically adjust indoor lighting to match changes in ambient daylight. The license agreements cover a package of strategies and technologies developed by [...]

The Lighting Controls Association has announced that EE110: Commissioning Lighting Controls, a new course I authored for the organization, has been added to its Education Express series of online distance education courses. Residing at the Association’s website, Education Express provides in-depth education about lighting control and controllable ballast technology, application, system design and commissioning, as [...]

Lighting for Tomorrow is launching its 2010 competition—with a focus on lighting control devices and SSL luminaires and replacement lamps. For the first time, Lighting for Tomorrow will be looking at lighting control products including stand-alone, system-based, and whole house devices. The lighting controls competition is building on the 2009 fluorescent dimming competition by seeking [...]

To reduce peak demand with lighting, we can turn it off, turn it down or use it more efficiently. Since lighting is critical for productivity and safety in many indoor spaces, turning it down instead of off is usually more desirable. Dimmable lighting therefore has a strong potential role to play in demand response. But [...]

This article, which I wrote for Buildings Magazine last year on behalf of the Lighting Controls Association, discusses the role for lighting controls in upgrading lighting systems in existing buildings. This post sponsored by

The Senseable City Lab is dedicated to studying and facilitating adoption of sensors in cities, enabling real-time visualization of how the urban environment is being used, from traffic patterns to data flows to energy and water consumption. Check it out here. Here we see a visualization of cell phone activity in Rome during a soccer [...]

BACnet International and the EnOcean Alliance, an international consortium of 130 companies from the building sector, today announced its cooperation with BACnet’s Wireless Networking-Working Group (WN-WG) to develop a vendor independent gateway specification for integrating EnOcean-based wireless energy-harvesting nodes into the world’s leading data communications protocol for building automation and control. As the only wireless [...]

A new standard for the design of high-performance green buildings is set to revolutionize the building industry. Published by ASHRAE in conjunction with IES and the U.S. Green Building Council, Standard 189.1, Standard for the Design of High-Performance, Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, is the first code-intended commercial green building standard in the United [...]

Home theaters are a popular addition to many homes, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, which estimated that by the end of 2004, one-third of U.S. households owned a home theater system, up from about one-fifth at the end of 1999. The addition of a home theater creates special demands on the lighting and controls. [...]