Environmentally friendly lighting control
Have you been to the new Target stores that have the grocery section? Perhaps you have a Super Target or your Target has had a grocery section for a long time. But in my area, all of the local Target stores recently added a grocery section complete with motion sensors on the refrigerated section. The refrigerated items that are behind the glass doors have motion sensors to keep the lights on only when people are near. The proximity of the effectiveness of the motion sensors seems pretty good. If you round the corner from a non-refrigerated aisle to an aisle that has the glass cases, the lights go on.
Here is a major pro and con with that strategy. You round the corner from a dry grocery aisle and you see the lights flash on in the refrigerated aisle. You’re surprised by that. You wonder if the lights in the new grocery section are already flickering. You spend time pondering the lights and not the food. Here’s scenario #2. You round the corner to a refrigerated aisle and the lights pop on. Your child, no matter how old, notices the lights popping on. They soon figure out that the lights are powered by a motion sensor. Suddenly you have kids running back and forth between the two aisles to make the lights go on. What gets lost in all of this is the food.
Target is doing the right thing by being environmentally conscious and cost conscious but the distraction of this method outweighs any positive benefits. Good lighting is about what is being illuminated and not at all about the lights themselves or how they work. The more time people spend focusing on the lights, the more time that’s taken away from focusing on what’s important. This is the same at your home. You may have beautiful goose-neck lights or tulip shaped path lights that look stunning during the day. But then at night your path can barely be seen or may be so bright it causes a glare when the ground is wet. Again, the focus needs to be on the effect of the lighting.
Why aren’t motion sensors lighting control automation?
Lighting control automation or LCA is a intelligent system with pre-programmed “controls” over lighting based on household use, security scenarios, and energy savings. Here are some examples of each.
Lighting Control Automation by Outdoor Lighting Perspectives
Household use:
Let’s say you have some teenagers whose evening curfew on weekends is 11PM. We can program your outdoor lights to stay on full power until 10 on week nights and then go to 50% power between 10PM and dawn. For weekends, your lights can be programmed to stay on at full power until midnight and then go to 50% power until dawn. This can all be programmed in advance so you don’t need to do anything. Then let’s say the kids are staying out late on a Monday night, you will have manual control over the lights as well. But otherwise, it’s a set-it-and-forget-it system. We set it up so you don’t need to worry about it.
Security scenario:
Let’s say you have a vacation home or spend long periods of time away from your home. We can program your lighting to come on every night at a low (energy-saving) power to indicate someone’s home. We can even program some lights within your house to come off and on at particular times to re-iterate to any possible intruders that someone’s home even when you’re not.
Energy saving:
One of the things we can program into your lighting control system is what power to run your lights at which works like a dimmer. In the middle of the night, you may want just enough light to let possible intruders know someone’s home. But in early evening and early morning there is lots of “coming and going”. We can program your lights to work at full power during those times of the day and to run at partial power during the wee hours of the night.
Motion sensors are not lighting control automation. They have no intelligence built in. They do not accommodate your living scenarios, your security needs, and are a poor form of energy savings.
To learn more about lighting control automation, visit our website. To find a local Outdoor Lighting Perspectives office near you, look at our locations list on our outdoor lighting website.
