Case studies

Energy-Saving Lighting for Luxury Eco-hotel in Cornwall (1/2/2010)

By Lightmaster-Direct

The Scarlet is a luxury eco-hotel in Cornwall, UK. Its design required a lighting scheme that embraces the best environmental practices while remaining in harmony with the hotel's surroundings. Lightmaster-Direct was commissioned to provide the design, which has resulted in a lighting system that uses just 3.36W/m2, yet provides guests with a great ambience and sense of opulence.

Public area of the Scarlet eco-hotel, on the Cornish coast.

The brief

The design brief called for an energy-saving integrated lighting control system to provide pre-set lighting scenes in all public areas and mood lighting to bedrooms, all controlled by a combination of wall controls, remote controls and motion sensors.

The solution

A Philips Dynalite solution was chosen because its controllers provide reliable and versatile control of fluorescent and LED lighting. All of the lighting is either fluorescent or LED, which probably makes the Scarlet unique in this respect. The design also challenges the expectation that hotel lights need to be on all of the time by making extensive use of multipurpose sensors to ensure lights are turned off when not required.

Philips Dynalite universal sensors ensure that lighting only activates when areas, such as the library, are occupied and when ambient light levels fall below a threshold level.

Installation

Lightmaster-Direct designed, engineered and commissioned the innovative lighting system to meet stringent environmental, functional and architectural criteria. Integral to the overall design, many of the hotel's light fittings were custom-designed and built by Lightmaster-Direct to meet these exacting standards.

The impressive architectural and mood lighting belie the considerable energy savings realised, with an internal lighting efficacy of just 3.36W/m2.

The Scarlet's fluorescent and LED circuits are controlled by a combination of Philips Dynalite relay and ballast controllers. Philips Dynalite universal sensors ensure that lighting only activates when areas are occupied and when ambient light levels fall below a threshold level. The backbone to the Scarlet's lighting control system is provided by Philips Dynalite's peer-to-peer communications serial bus network, DyNet.

The Scarlet’s fluorescent and LED circuits are controlled by a combination of Philips Dynalite relay and ballast controllers to provide an energy-efficient lighting design.

Two Philips Dynalite touchscreen control panels allow the lighting moods of the public areas to be set by the hotel staff. Philips Dynalite Revolution 2 wall panels permit local user control for some public areas and all the guest rooms. There are two engraved and backlit Revolution 2 wall panels in each guest room - one by the entrance and one by the bed - and these have been designed to be intuitive and simple to operate. Guests can select from a choice of seven carefully-created lighting scenes, including Ambient, Bright, Relax, Bath, Night, Balcony, and All off.

Guests can match their mood from a choice of seven lighting scenes, carefully created by the design team to enhance the ambience of the guest rooms.

Application

Given the architectural and mood lighting results achieved, it is incredible how considerable the energy savings are. Where a conventional hotel typically achieves lighting efficacy of 10W/m2, the design brief for the Scarlet called for 8W/m2, but with this design, the finished system achieves a staggering internal lighting efficacy of just 3.36W/m2 - representing just 34% of the energy use of a conventional design. We have also achieved significant energy savings with the garden lighting. Using discreet 1W LED fittings, a subtle and beautiful garden lighting design has been achieved using less than 100W in total!

The garden lighting design uses less than 100 watts in total.

Maintenance

In order to measure actual power consumption of the lighting system and to facilitate real-time monitoring for maintenance, the Scarlet is considering the addition of a Philips Dynalite DLight III server and MapView software to the lighting infrastructure. This will enable fine-tuning of the system over time, to achieve further energy savings.

Client feedback

According to the Development Director for the Scarlet Hotel, Simon Baldwin, the lighting system reflects the pioneering approach to environmental sustainability that is the hallmark of the hotel's design. "Lighting is very important within a hotel, and the energy used to maintain lighting is something that has been overlooked for a long time. The Scarlet has been designed to maximise the use of natural light as much as possible, and this has driven the development of the lighting system itself. Lightmaster-Direct has helped us achieve a lighting design that delivers both the environmental and architectural outcome we were seeking."

 
The lighting design in the dining room maximise the use of natural light during the day, and provides an intimate atmosphere at night.

Conclusion

The goal of this project was to build a unique and opulent hotel in a beautiful location, and to achieve performance at the cutting edge of environmental sustainability. While these goals are often considered mutually exclusive, the Scarlet proves that you don't have to sacrifice luxury to achieve high levels of energy efficiency. Scarlet really is the new green!

Lightmaster-Direct is a team of professionals dedicated to excellence in residential and commercial lighting design and control. The team has over 100 years of combined experience specialising in interior lighting design, garden and landscape lighting, lighting control systems and product design. Lightmaster-Direct is a Philips Dynalite Dimension dealer.

www.lightmaster-direct.co.uk