The impact of daylight on use of office lighting controls.

Författare

Pimkamol Mattsson

Summary, in English

Daylight may contribute to energy savings due to that it may eliminate the use of electric lighting. The study was conducted in 18 single-occupant offices to examine the occupants’ use of different kinds of lighting controls in relation to daylight availability. The 3 offices were equipped with the same kind of lighting control. In total, the following 6 different kinds of lighting controls were studied throughout the period of one year:
1. The traditional-manual on/off control,
2. The manual on/off and dimming control,
3. The manual on/automatic off control,
4. The manual on/automatic off with automatic dimming with the lighting setting of 500 lux,
5. The automatic on/off and dimming control with the lighting setting of 500 lux, and
6. The manual, automatic on/off with algorithmic control

To examine the use of each kind of lighting control, switch-on time and occupied time per day were measured in each office, respectively and then the averages for each month were calculated in hours. Further, ratio of the average occupied time to the average switch-on time was calculated to examine how the occupant used electric lighting from ceiling luminaire.
Preliminary findings pointed to the actual impact of daylight on the use of lighting controls. For every kind of lighting control, electric lighting from the luminaires was used less during spring and summer (March-September) than autumn and winter (October-February). Further, it was found from independent sample t-tests that there were significant differences in the use of electric lighting by using the manual on/off, manual dimming, and automatic dimming controls.

Avdelning/ar