Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Awareness of the economic costs and environmental consequences of electric energy use in buildings is steadily growing. Implementing energy efficiency measures for reducing energy consumption in buildings can be an effective strategy for managing these impacts. Within commercial buildings in the United States, electricity use for lighting accounts for 26% (around 346 TWh in 2010) and represents a large potential energy savings source. Significant lighting energy savings have already been achieved through the widespread adoption of efficient fluorescent lamps and ballasts in the past several decades. Looking towards efficient lighting operations’ innovations, wireless advanced lighting controls technology represents an increasingly viable option for capturing the next major level of lighting energy savings in new construction and building retrofits. Fundamentally, lighting is the most amenable building end use load for producing deep energy savings because of its dynamic controllability. Advanced lighting controls encompass control strategies from occupancy sensing to continuous dimming, institutional tuning and daylight harvesting. These strategies offer greater flexibility and higher granularity of control than traditional basic control methods. Historically, advanced control systems have required extensive control wiring, which has driven system costs. However, recently developed wireless lighting controls systems can be used to network lighting components, while potentially minimizing installation time and labor costs during retrofit in comparison to wired control systems.