PetroChina HQ sets the standard

Simon Richardson.

Incorporating China’s largest DALI lighting installation, PetroChina HQ’s lighting control system is setting the standard for flexible controllability and ‘green’ building performance. Simon Richardson, Philips Dynalite Area Manager - North Asia, reports.

Equipped with a range of energy-saving systems and advanced green building management technologies, the new headquarters of PetroChina, has redefined office building performance – operationally and environmentally.

In fact, PetroChina HQ has set a new benchmark for efficiency, and has emerged as a potential reference case for the development of a China-specific ‘environmental performance’ building standard.

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One of the key sustainability initiatives used in PetroChina’s new state-of-the-art headquarters is a sophisticated, intelligent lighting control system. This, along with the latest energy-efficient luminaire technology from Philips, provides PetroChina with a powerful combination of lighting control flexibility and functionality.

PetroChina HQ’s lighting control system permits lighting levels to be tailored to the use of space, allowing total flexibility for zone switching and dimming. This, coupled with presence sensing functionality, ensures no areas are overlit or illuminated when not in use.

Importantly, the lighting control system supports China’s largest DALI lighting application—it incorporates over 8,000 individually addressable fluorescent HF DALI ballasts, in addition to the system’s 2500 switched circuits.

This facilitates a high degree of ‘granular’ control, allowing operators to easily customise lighting schemes to specific areas, office configurations and events.

The lighting control system is programmed to operate in three distinct automated modes—‘working’, ‘lunch’ and ‘after hours’ (security and cleaning)—which are timer-based.

Although the precise timing and functionality is individually configurable for each floor and/or zone, it essentially corresponds to ‘lights on’ at the commencement of working mode, followed by a timed sequence of dimming to lunch mode, ending in ‘lights off’ when the system goes into after hours mode.

At this time, motion sensors are activated in amenities areas and lift lobbies to initiate lighting if motion is detected.

This level of operational flexibility simplifies the management of lighting energy consumption for the entire building. By simply ensuring that lighting is only activated when and where it is required, energy savings can be realised and money saved.

From a luminaire perspective, a distributed solution was selected for PetroChina HQ’s office areas. Highly energy-efficient fluorescents were utilised to achieve the required lux levels.
When paired with the lighting control system, the luminaires provide enormous potential for energy savings.

PetroChina HQ is equipped with a number of additional innovative design features aimed at optimising environmental performance. Automated mirror-coated blinds mounted on the exterior of the building windows track the sun during the day and reflect light into the building’s interior.

Here, natural light levels are enhanced with the required amount of artificial light, allowing PetroChina to save energy while keeping lux levels within a predetermined range.

This optimisation of natural light levels is achieved by the daylight harvesting functionality of PetroChina HQ’s lighting control system. With the aid of sensors, light levels can be modulated automatically according to the level of natural light available.

With the lighting control system online building-wide, PetroChina HQ is reaping energy saving rewards. Thanks to the building’s scalable control architecture, future expansion promises to be straightforward with additional third-party controllers for other applications easily integrated.

This scalability is also reflected by the lighting control system. Here, all of the DALI universes are below capacity and the existing lighting control system network is as scalable as it is robust.

Who is Simon Richardson
Simon Richardson has nearly 10 years experience in the lighting control industry as a channel management and system design technical facilitator between Philips Dynalite’s distribution channels in Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Simon has been stationed in Shanghai with Philips Dynalite for the past three years, and is completing his Masters of Business Technology (MBT).