Casambi and EnOcean: boosting a building’s eco-credentials
Issue 02-2022:
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Surmounting sustainability challenges is an activity best undertaken as a team. The combination of wireless lighting control and self-powered switches can significantly raise the green bar for buildings.
Wireless lighting control plays an increasingly bigger role in the provision of attractive spaces that offer outstanding user experiences while promoting sustainability.
Casambi’s Bluetooth Low Energy-based technology provides lighting designers and manufacturers with a framework for wirelessly linking devices together to enable the creation of personalized smart lighting networks.
Some of the sustainable lighting strategies to which Casambi can contribute include the provision of daylight control. This entails a perpetual balancing act to achieve maximum lighting quality and reduced energy consumption in unison with the intermittency of natural sunlight. Wireless lighting control also confers social benefits by improving visual comfort and personal safety. The combination of sensors and lighting control can measure the lux level and automatically adjust light intensity to cater to highly localized lighting needs.
Enhanced environmental credentials
Beyond the virtues of smart control, it’s possible to significantly reduce a building’s ecological footprint by going wireless. The potential for reducing embodied and operational carbon by using less wiring, batteries, and equipment is a huge advantage. Masters, controllers, bus power supplies, time modules, control wiring, cabinets – all the essential components of a wired system are rendered obsolete with Casambi.
Copper is becoming more expensive and the harmful components in batteries are also increasingly problematic. EnOcean battery-free, wireless switches address both these environmental aspects. The press of a button on the switch generates enough power to send a radio signal to turn lights on or off, or to control lighting scenes.
System flexibility and expansion
The combination of EnOcean switches and Casambi frees users from all the physical constraints of wiring. Any additions or changes to lighting installations can be easily implemented in the Casambi app. It’s possible to add or remove luminaires, move switches around, and add new functionalities and scenes at any time. This means that the latest and most energy-efficient light sources can be adopted as soon as they come onto the market.
EnOcean switches have been deployed in the vast majority of Casambi-controlled projects. When the BBC wanted to install and connect over 15,000 lights across nine UK sites, they chose Casambi control with EnOcean switches. This decision reflected their mission to reduce energy use, improve staff comfort, and introduce smarter, more flexible control.
Certified sustainable buildings have a greater asset value than ”traditional” buildings, suggesting that owners benefit from the investments they make in green, smart tech. They are jointly supported by EnOcean and Casambi.
“When introducing new innovative solutions, we need to consider how to scale sustainably. There are reports of a trillion sensors entering the market in the next few years. That’s a lot of batteries and cables! We must replace batteries with alternative technologies such as energy harvesting – otherwise, we risk trading one problem for another.”
Raoul Wijgergangs, Chief Executive Officer of EnOcean
“Wireless tech, digitization, and sustainability are intertwined. A key benefit of software is that you can constantly and remotely update it. Casambi Ready devices, for example, can be dynamically updated in the field. Over-the-air programming allows us to push new security, software features, and additional functionalities out to the entire fleet of installed devices at once. It’s this software-driven mechanism that allows constant and fast evolution, reacting to real market needs and more importantly, extending the lifespan of installed devices.”
Timo Pakkala, Founder of Casambi Technologies