Lighting Control - Commercial Installation

[ajgyomber]

Hey everyone,

I have a friend of mine that is an electrician. He has a client that has an office building that he wants to automate the lighting as the property owner pays the electrical bills. His tenants are leaving lights on unnecessarily because they don't have to pay for them.

I use Z-Wave in my house and I have to say it has not been 100% reliable but I suspect that is because I don't have enough time to troubleshoot the little issues on my network. I also think it may be that I am using a software controller (HomeSeer) rather than something purely hardware based.

He estimates there is over 100 light switches that they would want to automate. Does anyone have any recommendations and/or considerations? I am probably not going to take this job although I would like to add home automation as a line of business to my IT consulting company. I thought it was worth looking into and getting your guys advice regardless.

Thanks in advance!

--AJ

 

[Del91574]

Easiest would be to wire in occupancy sensors to the existing loads and not depend on any sort of controller.

You will not have any sort of HO grade unit, Zwave, etc. function properly on a multi-tennant commercial site. Keep in mind, many of these buildings are also multi-phase and also have multiple transformers involved. That will also eliminate any line carrier sort of device.

Lutron, Vantage, and the others for a switchable load sort of item, then tied back to a controller, however I think there's far more to consider that can't be addressed within a few forum posts and questions.

 

[gatchel]

I also agree on the occupancy sensors. Something like a wattstopper DT-200 and the appropriate power pack doesn't get much easier.


http://www.wattstopper.com/Commercial-20-60/DT-200DTCeiling_WallSensors.html