Energy Management

While traditionally, energy management has been focused on commercial buildings, today's larger homes and greater use of lighting, heating, and air-conditioning, means it has applications right across the building spectrum.

Significant energy and cost savings can result from the automation of these systems and payback times are usually in the range of 2 - 3 years. Additional savings are also yielded from reduced maintenance costs due to the reduced running time of the equipment.

To reduce energy consumption, ElecVision Smart Home Solutions can provide:

• Sensors to detect presence and turn off lighting and heating when an area is unoccupied.
• Scheduling to switch off loads at set times.
• Light level measurement to control and match the lighting to suit the conditions by either dimming or turning lights on & off.
• Integration of lighting, heating, and security / access control to automatically shut down or turn on loads, dependent on whether an area is occupied.
• Accurate climate control to ensure heating & cooling systems supply only what is needed.
• Voltage reduction controllers fitted to lighting circuits to reduce running current.

Using C-Bus, with its large range of devices and control options, gives the installer and end user the greatest flexibility at the design and installation phases and it has the ability to be easily expanded later.

Hardware or software control? C-Bus hardware such as relays, sensors, and switches, carry out the switching of the loads and give plenty of control options such as, multiple switching points coupled with automatic movement, light level, and time based control.

These automatic functions are especially effective at saving energy, as they are never too busy to turn off the load when it is not needed!
Override and centralised control can also be built in to suit the customer's requirements.

Software can be added to the C-Bus system to give a graphical user interface with powerful centralised control and scheduling ability.Software is available for both commercial and residential installations and may be used for full time control or just for programming purposes. This can also allow re-programming of the system from the maintenance or building managers office, regardless of where the C-Bus components are located.

Alternatives to automation for the commercial market also include voltage reduction controllers for fluorescent lighting. These allow the lighting to start normally and after a period of time, the voltage is reduced to save energy with negligible reduction of light output. While automation can control almost any load, these are designed to work with iron core control gear found in most fluorescent lighting, but they do not work with electronic control gear or other types of lighting gear. They can however, be easily retro-fitted to existing installations and give very good energy savings.