Toward an Integrated Platform for Energy Efficient Lighting Control of Non-Residential Buildings

Net energy import of Switzerland corresponds to about 13 BCHF (petroleum, uranium, etc.) each year. According to the energy perspective 2035 defined by Swiss Federal Office Energy, the energy import should be reduced to 7.3 BCHF. Meeting the goals defined by this perspective can be envisaged by mitigating the energy demand of buildings since the built environment consumes 40% of the total primary energy. In Switzerland; 20 % of the buildings’ energy consumption is moreover related to electric lighting. Therein, integrated building automation technologies, such as automatic regulation of sun shadings and electric lighting can play an important role in reducing lighting energy demand while maintaining user comfort. For this purpose, a rapid, reliable, accurate evaluation of the lighting conditions in a building is essential. In this paper, a control platform installed in two offices of the LESO experimental building on the EPFL campus in Lausanne, Switzerland is presented. This data acquisition and actuation platform hosts two motorized sun shadings per office, a dimmable lighting system, a presence detector, energy meters, ceiling mounted luminance-meters and two novel High Dynamic Range (HDR) vision sensors. A sample controller is implemented in the platform to evaluate its robustness and performance. This platform is currently ready for integrating novel controllers for testing several energy efficient control scenarios/algorithms.