How ‘WELL’ is lighting in buildings?
Lighting is everywhere in a building; however, it is often overlooked. It holds a great deal of potential if understood properly.
Circadian lighting has been around for many years, but adoption has been slow. A lack of quantitative data, lack of results showing the impact on occupants and lack of data showing return on investment further hinders adoption.
However, over the past couple of years, a lot has changed. Covid-19 has cast a renewed focus on health and wellbeing and caused many building owners to upgrade their facilities to better support occupants, optimising the environment to suit their needs and help attract and retain tenants. Lighting is a big part of this conversation.
The WELL building standard was developed to focus solely on the health and wellbeing of building occupants. It covers a range of areas, including air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort and mind - all with the aim of improving nutrition, fitness, mood, sleep, comfort and performance.
The 'light' segment of the standard aims to minimise disruption to human circadian cycles; it sets out guidance that supports a good sleep pattern, improves productivity within the workplace, and provides a higher quality of illumination for the various tasks completed in different workplaces.
Certain parts of the standard are mandatory, and others are optional; these can be added to enhance the occupant experience further, amounting to more credits, increasing a building's WELL score.
The lighting part of the framework is all about creating environments that minimise disruption to human circadian cycles. It uses a metric called Equivalent Melanopic Lux (EML), which quantifies light effects on human circadian cycles. It can be calculated at a point and in a given direction by multiplying the visual illuminance (in lux) by the melanopic ratio, which depends on the spectrum of incident light.
David Eves is one of the original founders of amBX; he explains how amBX's software platform, SmartCore, supports the wellness of lighting and how maximising the amount of natural light in a building should also be considered.
"An important aspect of a WELL Building is the quality of lighting that is maintained, combining both natural and controlled sources. amBX SmartCore allows the straightforward real-time management of artificial lighting and the sensors that monitor it to be both fit for purpose and supportive of human circadian physiology. Importantly it can also support the best use of natural light sources within the control scheme, monitoring and responding to augment the quality of light delivered to those in the space".
However, there are other areas that should be considered when establishing how WELL lighting is within a building, a major one being the impact of lighting on the environment and what can be done to improve energy efficiency.
Below are some areas that should be included in strategies to get the most out of lighting in buildings and improve wellness.
Integration
Lighting should be integrated with the rest of the building. Historically it was a siloed system as it could not communicate with the building management system; even today, there are many buildings that still have siloed systems. This makes managing and controlling them very difficult, costly and time-consuming.
At amBX, we recognise this and are passionate about enabling our partners to integrate their solutions and create the best results for end customers. Our open architecture allows us to be interoperable with building systems and devices, acting as a middleware integration layer connecting old and new protocols, which facilitate the convergence of data into one single source.
Data insights and control
Other areas to consider are data sources, user interfaces and insights. IoT devices such as smart sensors can be embedded in the light fittings, as lighting is ubiquitous; using it as a medium to facilitate connectivity and data collection makes sense. It can even react to factors, e.g., occupancy - turning on when it detects presence but also things like UV lighting - disinfecting areas when no one is present or supporting other systems such as security or safety.
It's also important that the data collected is displayed in a user-friendly dashboard and is easy for the building manager to view and interact with. AI and ML can be used to automate tasks and reduce some of the manual processes. This allows insights to be prioritised and alerts to be generated when there is something that requires human intervention. It also supports preventative maintenance allowing components to be replaced ahead of them breaking.
Energy-saving
Lighting is one of the largest consumers of energy in a building. According to a Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS), 17% of all electricity consumed in U.S. commercial buildings is for lighting (eia).
There are many unsophisticated lighting systems installed in buildings, and given that 80% of buildings in use in 2050 have already been built, many of them will need to be upgraded and made more advanced to therefore save energy and reduce carbon.
Integrating lighting with other systems greatly reduces wastage as insight is immediately improved, and therefore informed actions can be made. Embedding sensors, as mentioned above, also help to ensure lighting is only used when necessary. E.g., daylight saving sensors can be used to dim down the artificial light when there is sufficient natural light in a space.
SSE Smart Building division state that 28% of UK carbon emissions are from operational energy use in buildings. Starting tomorrow, this could be reduced by 20-30% by making simple changes (SSE).
There are many areas to consider when establishing how WELL lighting is in a building. The wellness of occupants is highly important, but the impact on the environment is also high immediate urgency. In addition, integrating the system and ensuring data convergence, insights and visualisation are considered helps to improve the wellness of the lighting, further creating a more efficient, sustainable, healthy building for everyone.