Giant (Lighting) Relay

San Francisco and its Moscone Center have been the host of a number of Lightfairs—the industry's top lighting exposition and conference. This year's show is on the other coast, but that's not stopping the convention center from making lighting news. With the recent opening of the Moscone West expansion, the convention center may boast one of the largest lighting control systems to date.

"With over 1,600 relay panels, this may be the largest lighting control system in the world," says Jon Stachelrodt, VP, Marketing for LC&D, Los Angeles, the manufacturer of the project's luminaire networking device.

According to Kristina Martin, Engineering Enterprise, Alameda, Calif., the project's electrical engineer and lighting designer, the job required so many panels because of the multi-function nature of the convention center's new 480,000-sq.-ft. space. The ground floor is open exhibition space, but the upper two floors are conference room swing spaces, according to Martin. "Each upper floor has the potential to be configured from one large meeting space into several dozen small conference rooms or any combination in between," she says.

This means each space requires two separate lighting systems: one for exhibitions and a separate, dimmable system to accommodate meetings. Engineering Enterprise selected a multi-lamp, recessed fluorescent fixture that uses eight compact fluorescent lamps with four two-lamp ballasts. Each dimmable incandescent luminaire, however, required a separate dimming control, meaning about 750 luminaires per swing space. Because of cost issues, the firm, instead, went with a stepped dimming process for the first three sets of lamps and a continuous dimming ballast for the last set of lamps in each fixture. The lamps were then custom-manufactured with the four-relay device in each of the 1,600 fixtures for superior control and, of course, significant wiring savings. "We calculated at one point that the wiring had been reduced by 97%!" says Stachelrodt.

For more on this project visit the Lighting community at www.csemag.com.