Are you still waiting to add illumination control to your commercial building? Illumination control delivers valuable advantages for commercial building owners. These advantages include lowered operation costs, improved energy efficiency, and enhanced security, plus other benefits that make commercial buildings more attractive to tenants. Best of all, illumination control can easily be added to new or existing structures without extensive renovations. Yet many structures still lack these essential building control systems. If you haven’t added lighting control to your building yet, read on to learn more about the benefits of illumination control and how you can get it for your building.

In larger facilities, building lighting control systems combine a building automation system with motion detectors, RFID scanners, access card readers, and other occupancy sensors. This encompasses all of the facility’s lighting circuits to provide a fully automatic lighting control system. Stand-alone lighting control systems can be created for outdoor lights in parking lots, garages, walkways, and signs. These systems include light level sensors as well as motion detectors to provide illumination when daylight fades. Illumination control delivers valuable benefits for building owners including:

#1: Less wasted energy

As much as 3o percent of the energy used in commercial buildings is wasted on lighting and air control in unoccupied areas. Building lighting control systems combine building automation systems with RFID readers, motion detectors, and other occupancy controls that register when areas are empty. The automated system turns lights on or off according to actual occupancy needs, preventing energy from being wasted illuminating empty areas.

#2: Lower operating costs

Lighting typically accounts for as much as 40 percent of the energy costs associated with commercial buildings, making it one of the highest operating costs that building owners face. With illumination control, building owners can use scheduling along with time and zone controls to turn off lighting and on as needed rather than relying on human memory. Eliminating the human element in lighting control can result in significantly lower operating costs.

#3: Enhanced security

Commercial lighting control is a popular loss prevention measure for businesses today. Low installation costs and minimal maintenance requirements make it one of the most affordable physical security systems, accessible to businesses of all sizes.  Motion detectors and light level sensors register when an individual or object approaches the protected area and the system responds, flooding the area with illumination and turning on alarms to repel intruders.

#4: Remote activation

With the latest illumination control systems, you don’t even need to be onsite to control lighting options in your facility! Building owners can perform all major actions remotely using a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop. Adjust scheduling, dimming, occupancy controls, and more instantly from anywhere with an Internet connection.

#5: Tenant Override

Buildings with multiple tenants can employ tenant override technology. This technology helps to attract tenants with atypical schedules, as it allows them to use their smartphones or other mobile devices to override set scheduling features and turn on lights and HVAC controls as needed.