CLTC staff members participated LightFair International last week. The event is the lighting industry’s largest annual trade show and conference. The Adaptive Campus Control System was among the projects CLTC showcased at this year's event. It was first introduced to the UC Davis campus through a PIER-SPEED pilot demonstration. Now UC Davis Facilities Management is installing the smart system on a much wider scale. The breakthrough solution allows facilities managers to incorporate a variety of adaptive exterior light fixtures—wall packs, parking lot fixtures, streetlights, etc.—into one w ireless monitoring and controls system.

"This system is a significant step up in terms of enhanced user amenity and safety," says Professor Michael Siminovitch, CLTC's director and a leading advocate for adaptive lighting controls. Part of UC Davis's Smart Lighting Initiative, the project will incorporate LED lighting technology to improve the energy efficiency of exterior lighting on campus and to extend the life of fixtures. High-pressure sodium (HPS) streetlights, for example, will be replaced with Philips Lumec RoadStar™ luminaires. Dimmable LED wall packs by Philips Day-Brite (WTM-60W-L-U-MC3-BLANK-BK-LU) will be installed along 12 campus buildings; each fixture will be equipped with one Lumewave Top900 control module and a WattStopper EW-205-12-LU sensor. Professor Siminovitch adds that incorporating advanced controls will further increase energy savings "about 40% above and beyond a simple upgrade to LED technology." The system is expected to provide significant maintenance savings, too.

The easy-to-install Lumewave RF network utilizes WattStopper motion sensors to automatically adjust lighting to the actual needs of occupants. When spaces are vacant, lights dim, using less energy. When a cyclist, pedestrian or vehicle approaches, the lights switch to full output. What's more, by comparing sensor data along the network, the system can accurately predict the paths occupants will travel and responds with ripples of illumination to light their way.

Photo: Kathreen Fontecha

CLTC’s director, Professor Michael Siminovitch, has been appointed the first Arthur H. Rosenfeld Chair in Energy Efficiency at the University of California, Davis, for his innovative work in the field of energy-efficient lighting.

“The Chair honors not only the very distinguished recipient but the amazing Art Rosenfeld, who is widely recognized as the father of energy efficiency,” explains UC Davis Professor Nicole Woolsey Biggart, director of UC Davis’s Energy Efficiency Center and a key member of the selection committee. “UC Davis is so proud to be associated with both of these very accomplished scholars."

“Dr. Rosenfeld was my advisor in graduate school,” says Professor Siminovitch. “His ideas on energy efficiency influenced and guided my studies and, ultimately, my career. I am really honored.”

The Rosenfeld Chair is a five-year appointment. It will support Professor Siminovitch’s ongoing work with industry and government organizations—including many Art Rosenfeld helped create—to spur energy efficiency. The honor also recognizes his outstanding work as a teacher and a mentor.

"This is a wonderful gift from a broad community of people who understand that saving energy has financial and environmental impacts that benefit our whole society,” says Professor Biggart. Donors supporting the Rosenfeld Chair include: PG&E, Sempra Energy, Southern California Edison, the California Clean Energy Fund, Chevron, the Climate Works Foundation, Exelon Corporation, Goldman Sachs, Power Integrations, Inc., and Wendy and Eric Schmidt.

Read the UC Davis media release.

See CLTC's full announcement.

A view from the Laboratory Sciences Building at UC Davis (courtesy of Photos @ UC Davis)

CLTC has audited 20 buildings on the UC Davis campus as part of the Smart Lighting Initiative, an ambitious plan to cut the campus’s electricity use for lighting 60% by the end of 2015. CLTC engineers are determining baseline metrics, including lighting power densities, hours of lighting use, and occupancy rates for spaces that still need evaluation.

These baseline metrics will provide the team with a better idea of the savings and the costs associated with various retrofit options, says CLTC Associate Development Engineer Gabriel Molina. Project planners are considering retrofits for 838 campus buildings (10,200,000 square feet of space).

The first phase of the initiative will focus on relighting restrooms, elevators and stairwells, and carrying out lamp replacements, says Assistant Director Julianne Nola, with Design and Construction Management. Past lighting audits and CLTC case studies indicate these areas can yield significant energy and maintenance savings when retrofit with energy-efficient light sources and adaptive (bi-level) lighting controls. Retrofit lighting for five greenhouses will also be tested in this phase. Facilities Management will issue a purchase order for materials by early June of 2012.

UC Davis Smart Lighting projects are based on innovations developed or refined by CLTC designers and engineers and implemented by UC Davis Facilities Management. UC Davis has already cut its energy use for lighting by 10% since 2007, in many cases using technologies developed by CLTC designers and engineers in partnership with the California Energy Commission’s Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program.

Learn more about UC Davis's Smart Lighting Initiative.

Networked adaptive lighting conserves energy on the UC Davis campus

Energy efficiency experts at UC Davis are applauding Governor Brown's executive order in support of green building practices. Executive Order B-18-12, signed on April 25th, requires that state agencies and departments act to improve the energy and water efficiency of state-owned buildings and operations.

"Upgrades for state facilities represent a significant opportunity to achieve our energy-efficiency goals, provide green jobs, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions statewide," says Professor Michael Siminovitch, director of the California Lighting Technology Center and the Rosenfeld Chair in Energy Efficiency at UC Davis.

Financial benefits to the state are also a primary focus of the executive order, which mandates that state agencies participate in demand response (DR) programs and reduce grid-based energy purchases by at least 20% by 2018, as compared to a 2003 baseline.

UC Davis research has contributed greatly to the proven technologies and strategies that will allow state agencies to meet the bold targets outlined in the governor’s order, targets which include zero net energy for all new construction and major renovations undertaken by the state after 2025.

Anthony Eggert, director of the new UC Davis Policy Institute for Energy, Environment and the Economy, says the order affirms California's leadership and that it will "drive innovation and adoption of efficiency technologies and strategies." Eggert advised the governor on clean energy and efficiency policy before coming to UC Davis in January.

Read the UC Davis press release.

Learn more about UC Davis's commitment to sustainability.

Download the sponsor package.

Learn more online at the CHESC sponsorship website.

BetaLED LEDway street lighting retrofit (Los Angeles, CA)
Photo © Ruud Lighting, Inc. - a Cree company

Download the report.

Review audio-visual footage from the webinar: Part 1 | Part 2

Geisel Library, UC San Diego; Photo: Erik Jepsen, UC San Diego Publications

UC San Diego is completing the second phase of its ambitious lighting retrofit project, upgrading the lights in its parking garages and lots to cut electricity consumption by 420,000 kilowatt hours every year. “At our average electricity rate of 8 cents per kilowatt-hour that equates to $33,600 saved per year,” says Anna Levitt, UC San Diego’s assistant campus energy manager. The lighting retrofits are part of a larger plan to save the campus over $6 million a year in total energy costs, and help reduce energy use to year-2000 levels by 2014, a systemwide goal for UC.

“CLTC was a definite influence,” says Levitt of UCSD’s decision to install bi-level controls, already installed in 324 stairwell fixtures, in 18 campus buildings. Now UCSD's new exterior lighting will have integrated occupancy sensors. “In three parking lots, we're trying out bi-level LED fixtures that go to 40% of full output when the lot is unoccupied,” says Levitt, describing the BetaLED LEDway street light. “In the rest of the lots across campus, we are installing [Precision Paragon ESTE] T5HO fluorescent fixtures that have two 4-foot lamps.” The fluorescents use 54 watts, versus the 220 watts used by the old low-pressure sodium (LPS) sources, and when the spaces are unoccupied, one of the lamps in each fixture turns off, cutting energy use further.

UCSD also has plans to retrofit its Recreation, IntraMural Athletics Complex (RIMAC), a project that should save more than $50,000 each year and bring the campus another step closer to its goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2025. Besides cutting costs, the retrofits should position UCSD in alignment with the next generation of California’s Title 24 regulations, which will likely include requirements for multi-level lighting capabilities.

See Anna Levitt give a video tour of UCSD's retrofits.

Photo courtesy BetaLED

More and more cities are swapping high-pressure sodium (HPS) street lights for energy-efficient LED or induction lights, but they could boost their energy savings an additional 40–50% by installing control systems too. Advanced controls enable lights to operate in an energy-saving mode during long periods of inactivity then automatically brighten when sensors register activity.

CLTC Director Michael Siminovitch has long been calling for new outdoor lighting investments to include advanced controls (or to at least be made controls-ready). It’s a position Siminovitch first laid out in his July 2010 article for LD+A magazine, "Taking the Long View on LED Street Lighting," and one he has since explored further in a white paper.

In its 2011 study, "Technology and Market Assessment of Networked Outdoor Lighting Controls," The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) cited Siminovitch and CLTC for “leading the charge” in this effort to maximize energy savings. That same report by the forward-thinking nonprofit concluded: “At a minimum, all street and parking lighting investments ought to include controls-ready, dimmable lighting products if not advanced networked controls themselves.” We couldn't agree more.  

Read Professor Siminovitch’s white paper.

Download the NEEA report.

Advanced lighting controls can achieve impressive energy savings for commercial buildings (occupancy sensors alone can cut consumption by as much as 40%), but the technology has to be properly installed and commissioned in order to perform. That’s why the California Advanced Lighting Controls Training Program (CALCTP) was created. Funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, CALCTP has successfully trained and certified 1,324 electricians, placing 807 of them in jobs through the Department of Labor.

At the heart of CALCTP’s innovative, flexible 50-hour curriculum is an intensive, hands-on lab course that allows students to practice their skills as they learn. "It would have taken me six years in the field to cover what I learned," says one electrician. CLTC maintains the program’s curriculum to keep it current with the latest developments in lighting technology. 

CALCTP has also certified 51 contractors, provided its Systems Course to 63 mid-level managers, and instructed 253 senior-level managers in its Business Development Course, giving management the tools to actively sell retrofitting opportunities to companies, which in turn creates more job opportunities for CALCTP-certified contractors and electricians while boosting energy savings statewide.

Visit the CALCTP website.

Learn more about CALCTP's promising practices for job placement.

The University of California has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels by 2014 (per UC Presidential Policy) and reaching 1990 levels by 2020 (per California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32). With these goals and the ultimate goal of climate neutrality in mind, the University of California Office of the President recently released its “Prospectus for a Sustainable Future.”

The report, produced by the UC Climate Solutions Steering Group, urges intensifying and expanding proven energy efficiency strategies and investing more boldly in renewable energy. The Group cites UC Davis’s Smart Lighting Initiative and UC Irvine’s Smart Labs Initiative (which included lighting measures) as recommended strategies worth repeating systemwide, stating that measures like these—that reduce energy consumption, and consequent carbon emissions, by 50% or more—provide the most immediate, cost-feasible means for reducing UC’s carbon footprint.

The report also urgently recommends initiating a systemwide, industrial-scale renewable energy program, citing biomethane. It stresses bolder, more comprehensive measures are needed to meet the 2020 goal and avoid $126 million – $475 million in costs associated with forthcoming state regulations.

See the full report.

Learn more about UC Davis's Smart Lighting Initiative.