A Rethink on Emergency Lighting Systems
For too long emergency lighting in a building has been treated as a separate system.
Most often, a new building will be designed and built and you will end up with two completely different systems to control and monitor the lighting, one for general lighting and one for the emergency lighting.
This creates two separate head ends, two separate software packages for monitoring and control and when other integration is required, for example interfacing to a BMS, you will now need two separate interfaces.
Of course this also usually means the need to deal with two different companies to implement and then maintain the systems.
Why is this? Is a separate system for emergency lighting actually required?
A lot of this comes down to legacy.
Emergency lighting has some very specific requirements around testing, reporting and keeping of records to ensure compliance with safety regulations. But it is not black magic.
Looking back some 20 years ago, the lighting control systems at the time did not offer great software features to support emergency lighting requirements and it really was not a priority for them. Standalone emergency vendors ran with this message and it simply became the standard way of doing things.
Is this still the case?
This old view of having two separate systems is now very outdated.
For quite some time, the leading lighting control suppliers have built more and more features into their systems to support emergency lighting requirements and now have features that completely surpass the typical vendor offerings in the market. Full graphical layouts with live status, completely automated test schedules, programmable groups, full digital records, customisable reports and much more.
Zencontrol system showing group arrangement for emergency fixtures and their current status.
Zencontrol plan view showing live status down to the individual fixture level.
Installation
Installing DALI-2 emergency fixtures is very easy. Simply loop in and out the DALI cable and continue to the next DALI device.
Need a wireless solution?
No problem. Using DALI+ (the international standard for wireless DALI), DALI-2 fixtures can easily be fitted with wireless modules to communicate back to a compatible controller, where the functionality will be exactly the same as a wired DALI fixture.
Where from here?
Smartscape has delivered thousands of DALI projects and now has a full suite of DALI-2 emergency fixtures. We can deliver a fully integrated solution with all lighting in a building being controlled and monitored from the one system.
By adding DALI-2 emergency luminaires to your system you ensure:
- You are using an international standard and are not locking the building owner into a proprietary system.
- You will have reduced implementation costs, with a simple install, less hardware and access to competitively priced fittings.
- Full compliance with the required standards with automated testing and digital logbooks.
To see our range of emergency fixtures click here:
For help in designing a system for your next project, please contact us.