Lighting in Design Q3 2018

BMS Open API

Cloud server

Link server

Cloud Open API

Internet

PoE switch

Wi-Fi access point

Stand-alone sensors

Management portal

Mains power

Switch interface

Wired luminaires

immediately translates into cost savings. However, this benefit is relevant mainly to larger offices, where there is the possibility to reduce the space occupied, for example, if a company occupies six floors in an office tower andmonitoring workspace use tells the facilitymanager that vacating one floor is a possibility – this generates a substantial saving. In small – and even medium-sized offices – this is often not pos- sible as the physical set-up of the office does not allow for reduction of the space. At the same time, small and medium sized offices usually do not have a facility manager able to convert the data generated by connected lighting into information concerning efficient use of available space. In small andmedium sized offices, the facility management task is often combined with other tasks and the person in the position is able to get a good impression of efficient use of space simply by walking around. The other benefit of connected lighting, that of personalising the lighting of workspace or meet- ing rooms, also requires a practical perspective. Worldwide organisations are changing their offices to open plan, often with ‘hot desks’, meaning em- ployees share a larger office space and often no longer have their own personal desks.This severely limits the possibility of employees personalising their workspace lighting as the lighting is shared by many employees and there are potential conflicts (for instance, one employee may prefer warmwhite light while the person at the next desk prefers very cool white light). Personalising the lighting in meeting rooms remains an option in modern offices but, to allow this, the lighting does not need to be connected as room-based controls have made this possible for many years. Conditions of connected lighting Compared to ‘unconnected lighting’ a lighting project based on connected lighting requires the following elements:

- Personalised lighting in employee workspaces, or in meeting rooms, to ensure the right lighting for the task at hand. With the evolvement of the IoT we can expect the benefits of connected lighting to growandmore ben- efits to be added. It will be like the internet where, over time, new applications developed and resulted in the rise of whole new industries and companies. ‘Connected lighting’ versus ‘unconnected lighting’ Given all the benefits of connected lighting, a logical question is whether there is still space for ‘uncon- nected lighting’. We defined connected lighting as 'lighting devices connected to the internet’, so a logical definition of unconnected lighting would be ‘lighting devices not connected to the internet’. But unconnected lighting can still offer many benefits such as reduction of energy-use via concepts like day- light harvesting and presence detection, or increased comfort by controlling the lighting or setting scenes. Let’s try to answer the question of whether there still is a future for unconnected lighting by taking another look at connected lighting. Insight into workspace use is an important benefit because modern office space is expensive and reducing the amount of square metres used

25

LiD Q3 - 2018