How to win more retrofit projects by going wireless with Casambi
Nowadays, most lit spaces do not perform in compliance with the latest energy codes, neither do they take full advantage of the latest LED technology. Advances in LED tech have opened the doors to smarter lighting control systems that can give occupants more command over their immediate lighting and provide access to daylight and energy-saving options, as required by green building certification systems. With Casambi, such benefits are easily retrofitted.
Recent studies show that people want to personalize their lighting, signaling the need to move beyond primitive on/off control to providing more end-user functionality and abilities to curb waste.
According to the International Energy Agency1, today the building sector is responsible for almost 30% of total global energy consumption. To reach the target of global net zero emissions by 2050, direct CO2 emissions from the building sector need to be reduced by 45% by 2030 and 98% by 2050.
It is interesting to note that in developed countries, almost three‐quarters of the building stock that will still be in use by 2050 has already been built. By 2040, 50% of all existing buildings need to be retrofitted with greener technologies to achieve zero carbon-ready levels.
Building Performance Institute Europe’s2 calculations show us that the building sector’s greenhouse gas emissions must have decreased by 60% no later than 2030 and the annual deep energy renovation rate must reach 3% as soon as possible. Furthermore, the World Health Organization estimates that each 1 Euro spent on building renovation will save around 42 cents in public health expenditure3. The need is very real and very urgent.
There is a very large portion of buildings that need to be made more energy efficient. Thankfully, regulations such as the EU’s ban on the sale of fluorescent lighting, and indices like the IEQ (Indoor Environmental Qualities) are providing impetus for the retrofit of smart technology.
Buildings house complex systems (heating, ventilation, light etc.) and it’s certainly not easy to start retrofitting them all. In comparison with other systems, lighting is perhaps the easiest and quickest to upgrade. Additionally, when you add control systems on top of it, you can immediately gain lots of advantages such as better energy management, flexibility, monitoring, and cost optimization abilities.
Compact fluorescents were banned by the EU Commission from February 2023 with T5 and T8 to follow suit in September 2023. Rough estimates suggest that around 250 million units of installed T5 and T8 stock will need replacing, making planning essential!
T5 and T8 fluorescent and compact fluorescent tubes are still common today and can be found everywhere – from industrial sites to schools and public spaces. In fact, around 40% of all industrial facilities currently use T8 fluorescent lamps.
Compared to fluorescent bulbs, LED lights are up to 80% more efficient and typically last up to 20 years, so it is well worth switching to this energy-efficient light source as soon as possible.
Green building certifications and industry standards such as BREEAM, LEED, WELL and EN 12464 are guiding us towards achieving our sustainability goals. In many countries, the environmental assessment and official certification of green buildings is now a much-valued sustainable development tool.
Buildings should be safe for the people living within them and therefore, health and well-being issues should be central factors in the development of sustainable buildings. With the help of lighting control systems, it´s now possible to protect and improve occupant health & well-being..
Why Casambi?
As aforementioned, two key aspects play a significant role in retrofit applications. Firstly, it is about improving the energy efficiency and sustainability of the installation and secondly, improving the environmental quality of the indoor or outdoor space, such as increasing the quality of light or the experience of the occupants.
Casambi caters to both aspects as it brings a simple, future-proof, easy-to-use solution. It is easy to adopt energy-saving strategies without having to jump many hurdles: no wires to lay, no complex installations, nor convoluted system setup – Just a vast ecosystem of interoperable Casambi Ready products that can plug and play (including many battery-powered wireless switches and sensors) and a mobile app in which all functions can be programmed and used – it is in here that you can implement daylight harvesting or presence detection, through which we estimate you can reduce energy consumption by up to 60%. Time-based scenes and schedules are part of the default functionality that can be utilized with all Casambi Ready devices.
With much-reduced hardware complexity and no wires, there is much less embodied carbon in the installation. Depending on the solution you choose, it is upgradable, serviceable and therefore future-proof. Casambi puts control into the hands of the occupants. Occupants can easily change light scenes or perform simple settings on their own, without relying on a professional.
Furthermore, Casambi provides significant savings across the total cost of ownership of the control system. This includes the upfront investment cost and all operational costs for the total lifetime of the control system.
You can also take efficiency one step further and make use of the recently launched Casambi Cloud Gateway. The Casambi Cloud Gateway allows you to bring the data extracted from your Casambi network to the cloud and use it for remote monitoring and control of the network. For this purpose, there are several data analytics solutions available from Casambi Ecosystem partners.
You can also boost efficiency by using data to achieve further cost reductions in the building; such as implementing predictive maintenance or even demand-side energy management to optimize the energy costs of your facility. Other operational costs can also be optimized by generating more intelligence and insight into the use of space inside the building.
Casambi offers a future-proof solution as it can be upgraded, re-configured and tweaked to meet new energy codes or new needs in the space, without adding or touching any wires: A retrofittable solution that supports sustainable practices in the long term, to the benefit of businesses, cities, people, and the planet itself.
Below (see: Graph 1) you can see the calculations for a recent project. This involved an industrial facility with a 25. 000 m2 enclosed area, more than 750 trunking luminaires and 150 sensors for occupancy detection.
The chart shows that Casambi was 29% cheaper when looking at the upfront investment cost – including all devices, installation, and commissioning costs. Operational costs – including the operation and maintenance of the installation – are 60+% cheaper with Casambi. Overall, when comparing the total cost of ownership for a lifespan of 10 years, Casambi provides a 30% advantage over wired systems.
You can achieve this too. If you want us to help you to calculate the savings for your next project, please reach out to the Specification Success team: specsuccess@casambi.com.
1 International Energy Agency IEA Outlook 2022
2 https://www.bpie.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/BPIE_Deep-Renovation-Briefing_Final.pdf
3 WHO Regional Office for Europe, OECD (2015). Economic cost of the health impact of air pollution in Europe: Clean air, health and wealth. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe
Graph:1
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