In more recent years, we’ve adapted to spending almost 90% of our time indoors and in the workplace. This lifestyle change means that we typically spend less time in natural light, so this has a huge impact on our circadian rhythms – our natural body clock that is responsible for
Helvar is an international lighting technologies company specialising in intelligent and energy-saving lighting solutions. Helvar lighting control solutions and luminaire components help to create smart energy-saving environments built for the future, using information, and working seamlessly with other systems. The strong commitment to intelligent lighting control solutions, people’s wellbeing and
Helvar is excited to announce that that The Spine in the UK has been awarded a DALI award in the commercial/professional category at the 2021 DALI Lighting Awards, alongside two highly commended projects. Oyak-Renault Factory in Turkey was commended in the industrial category and Hospital Nova in Finland was commended
BDC 319 : Aug 2024
In more recent years, we’ve adapted to spending almost 90% of our time indoors and in the workplace. This lifestyle change means that we typically spend less time in natural light, so this has a huge impact on our circadian rhythms – our natural body clock that is responsible for our daily sleep-wake routine. This rhythm is heavily reliant on the amount of light reaching our eyes. Helvar is a leading provider of intelligent lighting control products and solutions and understands the impact light has on people’s wellbeing and functionality. The workplace’s human-centric lighting is the easiest way to support employees’ wellbeing, performance, and circadian rhythm, and thus prevent winter blues and seasonal affective disorder (SAD). As many studies show, light affects complex systems that govern the 24-hour circadian clock in the brain, which regulates not just our sleep-wake cycles, but also hormonal activity, digestion, and other important bodily functions. Lighting has a direct impact on our brain and our hormone balance via the retina in our eyes. The contrast, colour temperatures and effective spectrum in light are key to our circadian rhythm. If we don’t receive enough light, the happiness neurotransmitter serotonin isn’t released to the same extent. While this can be just a transitory case of the winter blues, for some it’s a sign of SAD with symptoms similar to depression. Studies suggest that 20% of us might experience a mild version of the winter blues, while 1-5% might be suffering from SAD due to the shortening in day length and lower light intensity. The winter’s shorter days and lack of sunshine and natural bright blue light affect people in the Northern latitudes. During the winter months, people leave their homes in the dark and then commute home again, in the dark. If they also spend all day in a workplace without enough bright light, it can affect most people’s dispositions. “Ideally, to keep or reset our circadian rhythm, we would receive lots of natural, bright, blue-enriched light at the right time of the morning. The open sky’s light intensities range between 10 000 and even greater than 100 000 lux with 4000-6500 Kelvin (pure white to bright blue colour temperatures). During the darker winter period in the Northern latitudes, this is not the case. Also, the lighting levels in an average working area can be a marginal 300-500 lux. This light intensity doesn’t provide enough bright light and contrasting lighting conditions during the working day. As people spend most of their time indoors e.g. at work, these places should support people’s wellbeing and body-clock needs – provide good quality light with variability to counter the effects causing winter blues or SAD during the darker periods”, describes Helvar’s Marketing Manager Tarja Jokiniemi in her blog about Winter Blues and Workplace Lighting. In the Helvar 100 – Discovering Brighter Spaces Event, Performance Scientist James Hewitt shared his findings on good lighting and circadian rhythm: “Inconsistent light-dark cycles related to our lifestyles mean that we are gradually falling more and more out of sync with our environment. In fact, in industrialised societies, our body clocks are becoming more delayed. We feel like it’s earlier relative to the earth’s day-night cycle, which means that it’s more challenging to wake up in the morning and harder to get to sleep at night. This delay might be explained by weaker Zeitgeber time cues related to a smaller contrast between light and dark in our environment.” Fixed, traditional lighting isn’t designed to support our wellbeing. It lacks the ability to tune lighting levels throughout the day as optimal lighting conditions would also require variation in hues and intensity. Helvar’s modern human-centric lighting controls, however, offer dynamic lighting features including brightness and colour temperature controls. By incorporating these dynamic features in a workplace, a human-centric lighting system more accurately emulates natural light, therefore supporting the circadian rhythms of everyone using the space. To read the whole story, click here. Building, Design and Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
Helvar is an international lighting technologies company specialising in intelligent and energy-saving lighting solutions. Helvar lighting control solutions and luminaire components help to create smart energy-saving environments built for the future, using information, and working seamlessly with other systems. The strong commitment to intelligent lighting control solutions, people’s wellbeing and the future of smart buildings has led Helvar to develop a full end-to-end solution unmatched by the competition. At the Light + Building 2022 trade fair, Helvar will showcase its market-leading position in the field of intelligent, digitalised lighting innovations and will host thought-provoking lectures and seminars throughout the week in Hall 8.0, Stand D38. Helvar has taken firm steps to introduce future-proof, energy-saving and people-centric technologies to support its mission of Brighter Spaces. In 2022, Helvar has doubled the number of DALI-2 certified products since its 2021 launch. Over 40 certified DALI-2 application controllers and input devices allow customers to specify the Imagine 950 solution for a wider range of projects and applications, increasing their project portfolio and solution flexibility. The most significant addition to the Imagine 950 solution in 2022 is the ability to read energy and maintenance information from standard-compliant DALI-2 LED drivers. Helvar is one of the first manufacturers to offer a full end-to-end solution for this standardised data. It consists of LED drivers, application controllers and BMS integration through to cloud analytics, reporting and remote monitoring via Helvar Insights. “This is a great achievement for Helvar and the industry as a whole, and I am excited to continue our market leadership with the Imagine solution. With this end-to-end solution, customers can know the actual power consumption and energy use of their lighting accurately for each luminaire or luminaire group and view them in easy-to-understand graphs and reports through our digital services – Helvar Insights interface,” says Thet Oo, Helvar’s Director of Wired Solutions. “Maintenance data is also very useful for facility units. For example, knowing how many hours luminaires have been on compared to their rated lifetime allows facility maintenance to better schedule maintenance and even perform it proactively.” The just-launched Helvar Operating & Energy Insights module — providing energy and maintenance data — adds to the powerful suite of existing Helvar Insights modules such as Monitoring, Control and Occupancy, for space optimisation. This shows that DALI-2 with Helvar solutions is perfectly positioned to take lighting into the next era of smart buildings, giving the ability for clients to make data-driven decisions for their buildings. Helvar Insights has also widened its scope with energy monitoring and wireless ActiveAhead, meaning customers can now have one user interface showing Helvar Insights for Imagine, ActiveAhead or a hybrid lighting control system. The same user interface and features available to existing Helvar Insights customers using Helvar’s wired Imagine lighting control systems can now be used to get the same efficiency, sustainability and wellbeing insights from Helvar’s wireless ActiveAhead lighting control systems. With energy prices increasing and with an ethical responsibility to save energy from a sustainability perspective and as a way of helping to ensure a secure energy supply, understanding how customers’ lighting system uses energy is an important part of their facility management process. Through the upgrade of Helvar ActiveAhead Node Advanced in May, Helvar brings new scalability to its award-winning intelligent wireless lighting control solution ActiveAhead. The upgrade has resulted in the ability to connect and control individual DALI luminaires and selected Helvar DALI devices such as sensors and relays. With these additions, the easiness of ActiveAhead can be brought to use cases utilising DALI addressing and to new application areas such as warehouses, new types of offices, retail, and many others. The ActiveAhead Node Advanced is a truly unique product in the lighting market. No other product offers the benefits of DALI devices with simple local wiring while having these areas still connected together on a wireless mesh network. As a part of its full end-to-end solution, Helvar’s highly efficient LED drivers are designed to consume less energy and bring cost savings for a range of applications where powerful light output is needed. Helvar LED modules help luminaire manufacturers achieve a successful transition to smart, energy-efficient LED lighting solutions with optimised design and outstanding performance.
Helvar is excited to announce that that The Spine in the UK has been awarded a DALI award in the commercial/professional category at the 2021 DALI Lighting Awards, alongside two highly commended projects. Oyak-Renault Factory in Turkey was commended in the industrial category and Hospital Nova in Finland was commended in the healthcare category. The DALI Lighting Awards took place virtually on 19th January 2022. These awards celebrate and showcase the best use of DALI control solutions in lighting projects and installations across the globe. Designed to reward control, creativity, problem-solving, and difference, the DALI Lighting awards recognise excellence in lighting control. The judging panel consists of eight industry professionals, including a Chief Electrical Engineer, Lighting Designers, Editors, Associate Director of Lighting, Industry Relations Manager, and the DALI Alliance Technical and Certification Manager. “We are one of the founding members of the DALI Alliance. We continue to introduce leading DALI lighting solutions, including both lighting controls and drivers. With the introduction of the DALI-2 standard we have entered a new era of standardisation and interoperability in the lighting world, and we look forward to making further impact”, acknowledges Helvar CEO, Adel Hattab. “Winning the DALI lighting award for The Spine, a noteworthy project, and not one but two highly commended projects, Oyak-Renault Factory and Hospital Nova, are further proud moments for us in our DALI journey”, continues Hattab. The award-winning Helvar Imagine Solution is the world’s leading intelligent lighting control and management solution. It brings wellbeing and intelligence into a space, offering efficiency and scalability for a wide variety of applications. Imagine builds upon industry standards for easy installation and integration, adding strong and unique value on top of the standard. Winner of the DALI award in commercial/professional category The Royal College of Physicians’ new home in the north, RCP at The Spine, is located within the Paddington Village development in Liverpool’s city centre. The judges chose the Spine as the winner as they thought it was “a beautifully designed building that seamlessly combines both artificial and natural lighting to create a bright and welcoming environment”. The building is noteworthy for being the first building in the UK designed to achieve the prestigious WELL Platinum standard. The RCP occupies 70,000 sq ft across seven floors in the 160,000 sq ft building. It provides world-class facilities for medical examinations and assessments, educational courses and conferences, an exhibition space and office areas for RCP staff. “The Spine is said to be one of the healthiest workspaces for mental and physical wellbeing in the UK. Light is an important element of the WELL standard, and I’m delighted that Helvar is part of this project as wellbeing is one of our core values”, expresses Stephen Marley, Specification Sales Manager, Helvar. “Lighting contributes to wellbeing enormously as we know, so the extra attention taken by Helvar to create an intelligent fully addressable DALI lighting control system was highly commended by the judges”, explains Matt Waring, editor, Arc Magazine. BDP were the M&E consultant for the entire building. The Lighting Design House in London were tasked to design the lighting and control of a scheme specifically for a large biophilic area. Contractor T Clarke required partners to deliver quality solutions and selected Helvar to provide the lighting control for the whole RCP project. The judges also commended the additional focus on biophilia, “it’s so important for workspaces to have a more considered approach these days that is tailored towards the wellbeing of its users and the introduction of plant life is an ideal way to do this. While in some workspace projects, this can feel like a token gesture or as an add on, but the way in which this is integrated into the fabric of the building is incredibly well done- well-defined light levels for the biophilic aspects help ensure that the user experience for the facility is vastly improved.” Commendation for DALI award in the Industrial category With a 380,000 square meter area, the Oyak-Renault factory in Turkey serves as a particularly noteworthy and large-scale example of a successful lighting transformation. Commended by the DALI Alliance for bringing a tremendous improvement in energy efficiency, the freshly installed lighting system is estimated to provide annual savings equivalent to the yearly electricity consumption of 4,700 houses! Led by Helvar partner Elekon Enerji Sistemleri, renowned DALI experts in Turkey and surrounding areas, the project involved the replacement of 16,400 lamps in the workshops and offices in the factory and the installation of a Helvar lighting system to manage and control the new LED luminaires seamlessly. Overall, the transition to LED luminaires and a lighting control solution with a combination of automatic features enabled around 70% of lighting energy costs to be saved at the factory, equal to approximately 11MWh of energy and 5000 tons of carbon emissions annually. Commendation for DALI award in the Healthcare category Hospital Nova located in Jyväskylä, Finland was highly commended by the judges in the healthcare category. Judges recognised that patient and staff wellbeing is central to the lighting design. “DALI controls all indoor, and outdoor lighting at this newly built Hospital, one of the largest in Finland, and the project has over 30,000 controlled DALI addresses. The DALI system responds to both light level fluctuations and seasons and is freely programmable to allow users to tailor the desired lighting scheme. By understanding people’s movements and how the spaces are used, the lighting can be adjusted to save energy since the system can detect the most optimal lighting setting based on collected data”, says Mark Lein, Industry Relations Manager, Illuminating Engineering Society (IES). Controlled areas include patient rooms, corridor lobbies, operation theatres, helicopter landing areas and outdoor lighting. There is also lighting art in the main entrance lobby where there is DALI controlled colour lighting. The hospital is installed with the latest Helvar Insights, which automatically monitors the system’s status 24/7 and notifies maintenance engineers of any faults that require attention. “Nova Hospital is one of the most advanced and newest
