Intelux controllers for lights intelligent management in a school

The new Liceo Scientifico (high school building) in Ivrea, officially opened in October 1997, proved to be an interesting case for application of lighting control and even and now is still considered as a reference point for application of lighting control technology in school buildings. Given that the building was to be at the foot of the Alps, the designer's intent original was to make sure that natural geographical setting stood out. Hence, wide glass windows were placed along all the outside walls and helped by the technicians' keen collaboration a solution was found. A solution which meant setting up a lighting control system which superbly harvests the available daylight to the utmost, to guarantee correct lighting during the day and night but at the same time obtaining considerable energy savings.

The four-storey building has forty-five classrooms on the three upper floors and nine laboratories on the ground floor, not forgetting rooms reserved for school head, offices, library and canteens. The rooms on the three upper floors (15 per floor) are divided into groups of five. Each group is fed by a single-phase 5,8 kVA (25 A) INTELUX source controller. Hence, each floor has three controllers each with 30 fittings (4 x 18 W). The same principle was used for the laboratories on the ground floor where four x 5,8 kVA source controllers were installed. The entire lighting of all the rooms was controlled by two photocells positioned on the outside of the building one on the north side and the other on the south side.

With the Intelux stepless control system, that compensates in relation to the natural day light, lighting level can be varied from 100% to 50% with an absorbed power reduction that ranges from 100% to 45%. Resultant maximum energy savings are in the order of 55%, with a general average of 40%.