With energy efficiency central to the design of the £70m Ysbyty Cwm Cynon in the Cynon Valley, a sustainable lighting control system was needed to reduce the hospital’s carbon footprint and overall operating costs.
Working with MJN Colston, RIDI Lighting integrated the ward dimming system and emergency lighting testing onto one system, with a total of seven Control 3 lighting controllers spread about the hospital to control dimming on the wards and to handle the emergency testing and logging of approximately 2,400 emergency luminaires.
The controllers are networked to a central PC, which shows at a glance the status of the emergency lighting throughout the building by means of coloured status indicators. Clicking an indicator shows detailed information about the lights in that area along with the emergency testing logs. In all the hospital is broken down into 250 emergency testing zones across the four floors to allow the maintenance team to locate and rectify any faults swiftly.
Control 3 is a software-based control system using standard TCP/IP (also DALI) that gives complete control of lighting systems from a single interface. It also allows individual building users to manage their own environment via a PC pop-up or wireless control, as well as the system making use of the existing data network and manual control switches.
A RIDI spokesman said: “In all the lighting controls incorporating emergency testing means there is one less thing for the facilities team to worry about. Having emergency testing built in means the functionality runs automatically, with the facilities team benefitting from the automated tests and calls to action they deliver, along with increased energy savings as per the wider lighting control system.”
