Dear Reader:

One of the benefits to be derived from a networked lighting control system lies in its ability to provide for more than one scheduling regime, and that’s important if a Facilities Manager is intent on squeezing every bit of electricity waste out of his/or system.

Let’s say Schedule A is your “1st Shift Only” schedule. This would be developed with an eye toward all employees’ illumination needs when the plant and offices are operating at full capacity. See Current Lighting’s The Value of Wireless Lighting Control.

Schedule B might be your “1st and 2nd Shift Only” schedule. Let’s assume for this conversation that 2nd shift has people working at full capacity throughout the plant, but there are essentially no employees in the office areas, except cleaning crews and an occasional person walking through.

You can be aggressive in the offices with Schedule B, intending to harvest what would otherwise be wasted energy. In this case, consider turning the fixtures’ output down to 50% for the cleaning crew, and reducing the delays (the time to be elapsed after a person leaves the area before the fixture turns off) to 2 minutes.

A Schedule C could be “1st, 2nd, and 3rd Shift Only”, with work/employee patters as per Schedule B in the offices, and nobody working in the non-production areas during the 3rd shift. Your aggression at that point would be in the offices again AND the non-production areas, lowering the output there, and tightening up the delays. With respect to output, you DO need some light for people to walking through the offices and non-production areas, but not a lot.

Schedule D is simple. Holidays, maybe Sundays, etc., when there is essentially no one at all in the plant. Consider lowering the output again, only everywhere, for anyone unexpectedly walking through the plant, and tightening the delays to maybe 2 minutes. Lights simply need to pop on and off as-necessary, intermittently, for an unplanned person’s movement.

You’ll want to play with the scheduling, given your own unique business schedule, but I think you can see where with some thought, significant demand can be stripped out of the system, with the associated dollars being driven to your bottom line.

The more a system can be parsed, with each individual light source tailored to the specific business circumstances found within the building, the more waste can be wrung out of the system, in terms of electricity usage. Time scheduling is certainly a tool in the Asset Manager’s tool chest to help accomplish that.