Des Belford of AstraZeneca’s UKFM explains, ‘It is quite common for lighting in plant rooms to be left on when engineers have finished working, and this can be very wasteful of energy. Presence detectors are an option, but there is always the danger of an engineer being hidden from the sensors behind an item of plant and being plunged into darkness.
The solution uses one of BlueWave’s two channels to turn lights off 60 minutes after they have been activated by a pushbutton and the other to sound an alarm five minutes earlier so the lighting period can be extended.
At the various entry points to each plant room, there are two push-to-make switches to control the lighting. One switches it on and off, and the other extends the lighting period. When the lights are first turned on, the sounder and flashing beacons operate momentarily to remind the user how the system works.
For total safety, a few lights are permanently on to illuminate a strategic way out.
In the first hundred days of the installation, lights were on for only about 60 h — indicating the energy that could have been saved by the system.
BlueWave controllers have been installed in eight plant rooms on the site, and AstraZeneca plans to roll out the strategy to other plant rooms.
