Automated Lighting and Energy Efficiency

If your considering a integrated lighting system for your home you may not have realised the potential benefits they can bring in terms of energy efficiency. A lighting control system can help reduce your energy bills by keeping you up to dateon what lights are being used in the home atanygiven moment in time.Similarly, you can switch off any of your lightsfrom the press of a single button in any location in your home, meaning you'll never forget to switch off a light again.Control systems canmonitor how muchdaylight is present in a room and switch your lights on or off accordingly. They can even sense whether someone is inthe room to calculate whether lighting the room is necessary.

With a fully integrated lighting system all the lights and controls for your lights are linked by one central unit, meaning that you can access any light from any controller in the home or even a remote control over the Internet. This is perfect if you want to make sure all your lights are switched off if you've vacated the property, but with a touchscreen or a PC interface you have the ability to see where the lights are currently being used in the home. Our custom lighting touchpanelsgive a graphical representation of the current lighting status in each room and allow you to ramp up or down individual lighting channels.

We all know the benefits energy saving light bulbs have for our home and the environment but did you know that the life span of a energy saving light bulb is greatly reduced by frequent switching? Most manufactures will test their bulbs by switching them every few hours to arrive at their life expectancy figure. Switching a bulb in your home more frequently than this will mean shorter life spans and inevitably lead to more bulbs. This will not only hit your pocket, but it will also hurt the environment too, manufacturing bulbs is energy expensive and offsets the benefits of the energy efficient bulb. Our digital dimming systems slowly ramp lights on to the required brightness andcan be actively managed tohold the bulb on a low light level between frequentswitching- protecting the lamp saving replacement cost and effort.

In terms of automation, Lighting keypads now feature ambient light detectors to monitor the light in a room in real time. Lights can be automatically switched on and adjust to maintain a constant lighting level. Similarly, if there's enough ambient light in the room, then the lights can be automatically switched off to save energy. The same ambient light sensor can be used to close curtains or blinds should the sun be shining brightly through the window, protecting fabrics in the room and regulating room temperature, naturally.In addition to light detectors the use of motion detectors can be a real benefit to energy reduction by knowing when a room is occupied. You can even integrate existing PIR motion detectorsin your home alarm system to sense room occupation. Combining these two functions means lights will only switch on when it is occupied and the room is dark enough to require it.

Home automation systems are a great innovation for lighting and energy efficiency and provide the most cost effective benefit in automating your home. For more information visit our website at: www.customcontrols.co.uk

Dave Gadsby

email:dave@customcontrols.co.uk http://www.customcontrols.co.uk

Custom Control & Entertainment Solutions - Home Cinema, Multi-Room Audio Video, Home Automation & Lighting Control. Premier Dealers for Crestron, Kaleidescape, Lutron and Bowers & Wilkins.