Honeywell, a global leader in connected buildings, and Signify, a world leader in lighting, have announced a strategic alliance to deploy integrated, smart lighting solutions for commercial buildings. Together, the companies aim to improve the occupant experience — focusing on productivity and well-being — and to reduce energy consumption.
The collaboration integrates Signify’s Interact connected lighting system and software, and its UV-C disinfection lighting, with Honeywell Building Management Systems and the Honeywell Forge enterprise performance management platform. The combined offerings will manage energy consumption while factoring in occupancy along with air quality indicators such as temperature and humidity. Signify’s lighting solutions* will complement Honeywell’s Healthy Buildings air quality solutions beginning in early 2021, and can be controlled, measured and monitored via the Healthy Buildings dashboard to understand air and surface cleaning compliance and metrics.
Signify offers additional elements like human-centric lighting to improve productivity and well-being; these elements include its NatureConnect and UV-C disinfection lighting. UV-C breaks down the DNA or RNA of micro-organisms, including viruses and bacteria, rendering them harmless. In laboratory testing, Signify’s UV-C light sources reduced SARS-CoV-2 virus infectivity on a surface to below detectable levels in as few as 9 seconds.1
Additionally, building owners and operators will be able to better manage lighting systems and energy efficiency with smart LED lighting systems. Lighting represents 17% of all electricity used in U.S. commercial buildings according to the Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey,2 making it the largest end use of electricity in buildings. Similar usage rates are seen globally.3
Signify’s connected LED lighting system Interact Office can save up to 70% of the energy used for lighting4 and deploying advanced building controls and sensing, like those from Honeywell, can save up to 30% in facility energy costs.5
“Increasingly we see lighting systems playing a critical role in buildings to improve occupant comfort, well-being and productivity as well as to help meet energy savings goals. We anticipate this trend will continue to grow,” said Vimal Kapur, president and CEO, Honeywell Building Technologies. “Our collaboration with Signify will allow us to enable our customers to implement integrated lighting solutions that help improve the occupant experience with customizable, personal lighting options that can be integrated into our Honeywell Forge and Building Management Systems platforms.”
“There are known benefits how of lighting can improve occupant experience and well-being,” said Harsh Chitale, division leader digital solutions at Signify. “Many of our customers expect our solutions to deliver value beyond the scope of lighting. We look forward to capitalizing on this collaboration with Honeywell to jointly develop products and systems that provide greater value to our customers. We aim to deliver end-user benefits to building occupants, such as increased well-being and productivity, while providing channel partners with products that are easier to commission and maintain.”
Integrated Building And Lighting Systems To Serve Malaysian Eye Clinics
Honeywell and Signify are deploying integrated offerings at OPTIMAX Eye Specialists, a network of leading eye specialist clinics in Malaysia, to help the organization improve its air quality and surface disinfection efforts.
“Honeywell and Signify offered our clinics a complete solution for air, surface and object disinfection that allows us to clearly communicate to our clinicians, staff and patients how we are working to support well-being in our spaces,” said Tan Sri Dato’ Tan Boon Hock, founder, OPTIMAX Eye Specialists Centre.
The clinics are using Signify UV-C lighting in upper air luminaries, stand-alone trolleys and in Honeywell-controlled fan coil units to increase well-being by contributing to disinfect air± and surfaces§ in rooms. Honeywell’s Healthy Buildings dashboard will control and monitor the Signify lighting technologies in the clinics.
The integrated Honeywell and Signify products can support the needs of any building and feature specific solutions for premium commercial buildings, airports, hospitality, healthcare, education, retail and stadia sectors. Honeywell and Signify are also currently deploying the integrated solutions, including Signify’s Philips UV-C upper air disinfection luminaires, in several Honeywell global offices.
Honeywell’s Healthy Buildings solutions help building owners improve their building environments, operate more cleanly and safely, comply with social distancing policies, and help reassure occupants that it is safer to return to the workplace. By integrating air quality, safety and security technologies along with advanced analytics, Honeywell’s Healthy Buildings solutions are designed to help building owners minimize potential risks of contamination and improve business continuity by monitoring both the building environment and building occupants’ behaviors.
* Signify’s products (including its UV-C air and surface disinfection products) are not medical devices, they are not approved, certified or registered as medical devices in any jurisdiction, and are not meant by Signify to be used for the disinfection of medical devices or for other medical purposes.
± The germicidal effectiveness of UV-C light sources is proportional to the exposure time of the microorganism to the UV-C light source and the intensity of the UV-C light source. Therefore, sufficient air flow in the room (which may be achieved through forced air flow or natural convection) is required for effective operation of Signify’s UV-C upper air disinfection luminaire solutions.
§ Signify’s UV-C surface disinfection products (fitted with Signify’s UV-C light sources) will achieve the same level of virus infectivity reduction as long as the same UV-C dose is achieved on each area of surface that is irradiated.
References
1 Nadia Storm et al, Rapid and complete inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 by ultraviolet-C irradiation, 2020. Subject to peer review and available only as a pre-print at https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-65742/v2. The UV-C irradiance used in this study was 0.849 mW/cm2.
2 U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2018 Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey Preliminary Results, CBECS 2012 Trends in Lighting in Commercial Building, Released May 17, 2017 [Accessed December 6, 2020]
3 CIBSE Journal, Module 22: Lighting control technologies and strategies to cut energy consumption, Released November 2010 [Accessed December 11, 2020]
4 The Climate Group, Smarter energy: accelerating business use of indoor connected LED lighting, October 19 2020 [Accessed December 14, 2020]
5 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Impacts of Commercial Building Controls on Energy Savings and Peak Load Reduction, May 2017 [Accessed November 17, 2020]
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