Lighting Control Testbeds at the General Services Administration

Showing Promise for Lighting Energy Reductions

Lighting represents 26 percent of a commercial building’s electric load, which roughly translates to 10 percent of a building’s operating costs. Advanced lighting controls can greatly reduce that load, but so far, U.S. commercial building owners and operators have not reaped those energy savings—only one percent of those buildings use lighting control systems.

Given the potential savings, why are so few of these systems being used? One reason is that relighting can be costly—especially in existing buildings, where it’s impossible to predict what barriers might be encountered during the installation. Unfamiliarity with these systems also deters some potential users from taking advantage of these technologies. Overcoming these two obstacles could greatly increase the use of advanced lighting controls.

Toward Increased User Acceptance

Francis Rubinstein and Joy Wei of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) teamed with the U.S. General Services Administration for a Commercial Buildings Partnership study to address the issue. The CBP program was established by the U.S. Department of Energy to demonstrate leading edge technologies that could significantly reduce energy consumption in commercial buildings. The study’s goal was to develop affordable advanced controls to eliminate wasted lighting energy in existing commercial buildings.

The ambitious goals of the BTUS’s lighting team are to achieve 80 percent lighting energy savings in existing commercial buildings with controls that cost $2 per square foot (ft2) installed by 2015, and to work with industry to create the next-generation controls.

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