Preliminary Results from an Advanced Lighting Controls Testbed

Preliminary results from a large-scale testbed of advanced lighting control technologies at the Phillip Burton Federal Building at 450 Golden Gate Ave. in San Francisco are presented. The first year objective of this project is to determine the sustainable energy savings and cost-effectiveness of different lighting control technologies compared to a portion of the building where only minimal controls are installed. The paper presents the analyzed results from six months of tests focused on accurately characterizing the energy savings potential of one type of daylight-linked lighting controls compared to the lighting in similar open-planned areas without dimming controls. After analyzing a half years data, we determined that the annual energy savings for this type of daylight-linked controls was 41% and 30% for the outer rows of lights on the South and North sides of the building, respectively. The annual energy savings dropped to 22% and 16% for the second row of lights for the South and North, respectively, and was negligible for the third rows of lights.