Responsive Lighting Solutions

Lighting accounts for 38% of the electricity used by commercial buildings in the United States and 39% of electricity use in office buildings, representing a large potential source of energy savings [1]. Responsive lighting controls are the most practical and economical means to dramatically reduce the energy footprint of commercial building lighting systems and make building electrical systems more responsive to times of grid stress. Controls also provide an opportunity to maximize efficiency while maintaining favorable lighting conditions when and where they are needed. Despite these advantages, key interested parties, ranging from building managers to large public and private owners, are unaware of how new control technologies have significantly improved the energy-efficiency of lighting systems. Efficient, highly-controlled lighting for open-plan office spaces has always been a challenge for facility designers. This work focuses on one emerging solution for responsive lighting – workstation-specific (WS) luminaires - that offers tremendous potential advantages in terms of energy efficiency and providing luminous conditions that reflect occupant needs in open-plan offices. 

The General Services Administration (GSA) Public Building Service (PBS) owns or leases more than 9,600 assets and is responsible for managing an inventory of diverse Federal buildings, totaling more than 370 million square feet of building stock. Since the large majority of the GSA’s buildings include office spaces, and GSA is mandated to meet ambitious energy targets by 2015 and greenhouse gas reductions by 2020, the Green Proving Ground identified costeffective, energy-efficient lighting solutions as a priority focus area for its 2011 program. 

This GPG study built upon earlier Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) studies conducted on workstation specific (WS) lighting in the Phillip Burton Federal Building, San Francisco [2][3]. This study expanded on the previous studies by analyzing results for both a wider subset of GSA-operated buildings in California as well as a greater number of responsive lighting control strategies.