LONworks is a widely employed international automation technology for the engineering of complex energy saving strategies in construction and other industries. In this project Shade Factor utilised the market leading components and programming expertise of our German partner Warema to automate 4800 blinds which track the sun and neighbourhood shadows to provide glare free workspaces and reduced heat gain in these premium office spaces.
The physical network consists of a vertical backbone running the full height of the building routed to local networks of motor control units on each floor.
Using a single roof mounted sensor the system mathematically calculates the sun position at any moment in time and together with other logic provides a range of sophisticated functions for occupant comfort:
- A sun function that lowers and raises blinds once a brightness level has been exceeded and a delay time has expired
- A weekend function that increases the delay time, therefore reducing the number of blind movements and saving power usage
- A light penetration function that adjusts the height of the blinds incrementally so that sunlight always extends to a maximum of 1 metre from the façade
- An evening function that raises all blinds so that the special lighting effects of the tower can be seen
- A local control function that allows occupants to override the automatic system until a holding time elapses
- An “Annual Shading” that analyses the built environment and retracts blinds when they fall into the shadow of adjoining buildings
The control installation was completed on time, within budget and with full compliance to the builder’s specification. A learning phase followed where via remote connection Shade Factor adjusted various parameters to fine tune the installation to the daily life of the building. Each tenant had different requests for local operation and therefore whilst the automatic features were required to be consistent throughout the building the Warema LON system was locally interfaced to operate the blinds via Dynalite, C-Bus, Crestron, AMX as well as wall switches, remote controls, and Warema LONworks control screens.
