RAB Lighting Intros DLC Qualified Lighting Control System

RAB Lighting recently announced that its Lightcloud system is the first and only lighting control system eligible for utility company rebates. It is the first system listed on the DesignLights Consortium (DLC) Qualified Product List (QPL). On June 27, 2016, the DLC launched its QPL for Networked Lighting Control (NLC), and Lightcloud is the first to be recognized as meeting those performance specifications.lighting control

Lightcloud from RAB Lighting is designed to be a powerful, easy-to-use, and affordable wireless control system for facility management professionals. The selection by DLC is an additional validation of Lightcloud as the only current choice to radically reduce energy costs in commercial buildings. The listing on DLC QPL qualifies Lightcloud for utility energy efficiency programs that reduce upfront costs and accelerate the payback period.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the use of lighting controls in commercial buildings will save $10.4 billion annually. To date, adoption of these systems is less than 3%, chiefly because traditional lighting control systems are often very costly to install and intimidating to use.

Lightcloud aims to breakd down these barriers by using simplified setup and commissioning, and can be controlled from any mobile device as well as a laptop. The system is available from more 6,000 electrical supply distributors in the United States. For installation, an electrical contractor wires the Lightcloud devices for power, and the job is done.

Scheduling, daylight harvesting, personal dimming, occupancy sensing, and other control techniques are intelligently combined to save users up to 68% on lighting energy costs from day one of installation. RAB’s control solution can be used for retrofits with incandescent, fluorescent, metal halide, and LED lighting loads, regardless of the fixture manufacturer. Also, RAB offers a wide array of fixtures with Lightcloud pre-installed for lighting replacement applications and new construction.

DLC Efforts Around Lighting Controls

“Looking to the future, utilities will increasingly direct their rebates to Networked Lighting Control technologies in order to meet the energy savings targets placed on them by their regulators,” says Gabe Arnold, the DesignLights Consortium’s program manager. A recent survey of DLC Member utilities indicated that at least 25% of those polled plan to require Networked Controls to be listed on the DLC QPL as soon as it contains a sufficient number of systems, and 50% plan to require it by 2017.

The NLC QPL equips building owners, facility managers, lighting designers, specifiers, contractors, and utility energy efficiency programs with an information resource to understand and evaluate NLC systems in this evolving sector.

As the implementation of NLCs increases in importance for energy efficiency incentives and rebate programs, the performance specifications and Qualified Products List for NLCs has the potential to become as influential as the DLC’s existing Solid State Lighting Qualified Products List, which currently contains almost 185,000 qualified products.

The Networked Lighting Control Specification and Qualified Products List is part of a larger Commercial Advanced Lighting Controls (CALC) initiative by the DesignLights Consortium.