Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

This report describes the work performed to design, develop, and demonstrate an IBECS network/ballast interface that is useful for economically dimming controllable ballasts in commercial buildings. The first section of the report provides the general background of the IBECS (Integrated Building Environmental Communications System) research and development work as well as the context for the development of the network/ballast interface. The research and development effort that went into producing the first proof-of-concept circuit and the physical prototype of that concept is detailed in the second section. In the third section of the report, we describe the lessons learned from the first demonstration of the network/ballast interface at an office at LBNL. The fourth section describes how electrical noise interference encountered with the first generation of interface led to design changes for a refined prototype that hardened the interface from electrical noise generated by the ballast. The final section of the report discusses the performance of refined prototype after we replaced the proof-of-concept prototype with the refined prototypes in the demonstration office at LBNL.