Configuring Emergency Lighting

Modified on Tue, 26 Sep, 2023 at 8:38 AM

Configuring Emergency Lighting¶

You may handle emergency lighting needs using on the two methods discussed in the following sections.

Implementing with independent Bug-Eye lights¶

This solution uses standard AC based solution to the provide the emergency lights in key areas of the facility not controlled by smartengine. In this solution, AC power is supplied to both the bug-eyes and the smartengine. The smartengine controls an in-line dry contact relay via a smartengine Universal Gateway, Outage relay. bugeye

Each smartengine is connected to an outage relay that controls a dry contact relay. When the relay is closed, AC power is used to charge the backup battery for the bug-eye light fixtures. When AC power is lost OR the smartengine fails for any reason, the dry-contact relay will be opened, at which point the backup batteries inside the bug-eyes will be switched on and the bug eyes will provided the proper level of egress lighting. This relay is setup in a fail-safe configuration with a normally open dry contact relay. The following wiring line diagram shows how the solution is implemented.

bugeye

Note

This solution does not require any software configuration. It only needs the specific smartengine Universal Gateway (Outage Relay) hardware to be connected to the smartengine as shown above.

Implementing with designated smartengines¶

This solution is generally preferred by lighting designers as it is aesthetically elegant. However, it requires the use of UL924 listed UPS. The smartengine system can then be configured with emergency lighting zones and their corresponding fixtures. The smartengines participating in the zones detect the power state (primary or backup) based on inputs through Emergency Gateway.

A lighting designer should specify how many and which lights fixtures in the plan should be designated as emergency to meet egress lighting levels. Each of these emergency fixtures should be connected back to a designated emergency smartengine that is backed up via a UL 924 UPS device. The Form C contacts on the UL924 UPS is connected to the smartengine via the Universal Gateway for Emergency Lighting.

Tip

The UL924 certified UPS must be sized to sustain the lighting load (2200 watts/smartengine) for minimum 90 minutes. This is required by code.

The following diagram shows how the various hardware components are wired.

emergency lighting

Emergency Lighting Zones¶

The emergency lighting configuration consists of one or more zones. A zone is a group of designated smartengines that are typically connected to same power source (and backup). A emergency lighting gateway is used by the smartengine to determine the state of the power source — primary or backup.

The Universal Gateway (Emergency Lighting) can be configured to operate in one of the following modes:

Open on Primary where the open signal from the connected relay indicates that the power source is primary, and closed state indicates that the power source is backup (or emergency power)
Closed on Primary where the closed signal from the connected relay indicates that the power source is primary, and open state indicates that the power source is backup (or emergency power)

Zone Characteristics

Each designated smartengine has a one emergency lighting gateway that detects whether the smartengine is powered from primary power or backup power source.
If any of engines is on backup power, the zone is considered to be in backup power mode.
All emergency lighting gateways used in a zone must be in the same mode.
A subset of the fixtures from each smartengine can be designated as emergency lighting fixtures.
When smartengine is on backup power, all designated emergency lighting fixtures on the smartengine operate at 100% light level.
The backup power must be able to provide the power required by the smartengines and the fixtures (operating at 100% light level). This can be confirmed by running test function on a zone, which produces a power consumption report.

Setting up emergency lighting zones¶

The designated smartengines, and the emergency lighting fixtures can be configured using the smartmanager. The emergency lighting solution administration requires special privileges and the administrative user can setup dedicated users who can perform this task. This ensures that emergency lighting set up is not impacted by any other configuration activities.

Setting up Emergency Lighting Administration

Set up a user with the emergency lighting administration privilege in Commission System application.
Navigate to the Emergency Lighting application after logging in as the user created in the step above. This application is only available when the current logged in user has the privileges to administer emergency lighting.
If any of the hardware constituents of the the emergency lighting solution (emergency lighting fixtures, smartengines, emergency lighting gateways) are modified in any way (for example, removal or disconnection), then alarms are generated in the system to indicate the issue.

You can configure emergency lighting as follows:

Use the Emergency Lighting application in smartmanager to create zone and adding one or more smartengines with connected emergency lighting gateway.
Navigate to the selected zone to launch the Configure Fixtures dialog to add set of lights connected to the smartengines within the zone that must be powered on during backup power operation.
You should test the zone by physically switching the power source to backup power mode. You may operate the zone in test mode which will power the smartengines in the zone so that only the emergency fixtures are on (at 100%) and all other fixtures are turned off.
The test can be used to ensure that all the required spaces have the desired light levels in case of emergency.
You may also view emergency lighting report for the zone that will report the power consumed by the smartengines during the emergency power event. This is important to ensure that the backup power source can meet the needs of the emergency mode operation.

Emergency Lighting Gateway Configuration

It is critical that the emergency lighting gateway configuration matches the way it is wired because that determines whether the smartengine is operating in emergency (backup) power mode or the primary power mode.

When a smartengine is operating in emergency power mode, then the following restrictions apply: * the fixtures operate at 100% light level if they are configured as emergency lighting fixtures * the fixtures are turned off if they are not configured as emergency lighting fixtures. * fixtures cannot be moved and new fixtures cannot be discovered.

Emergency Lighting Alarms¶

Alarm	Severity	Message
Zone in emergency power	Emergency	Zone name is emergency power mode
Engine Power Supply Failure	Critical	Emergency Lighting Engine ENGINE is down, PowerSupplyA/B Failed, FAILUREREASON
Engine Fan Failure	Critical	Emergency Lighting Engine ENGINE is down, Fans have failed (COUNT total, id of first bad fan:ID
Engine configured in zone is down	Error	Emergency Lighting Engine: ENGINE is down
Fixture configured in zone is down	Error	Emergency Lighting Fixture: FIXTURE is down
Fixture configured in zone but Engine is not in zone anymore	Error	Emergency Lighting Fixture FIXTURE has been moved to an engine which is no longer part of the zone the fixture is configured to be in. Fixture zone is Zone. Engine zone is ZONE
Emergency Lighting Gateway is configured but not present	Error	EL Gateway fixture FIXTURE has operational state that does not match the configuration state. It is configured to be on engine ENGINE. It is currently not discovered
Emergency Lighting Gateway is configured but is of different type and has moved engine or port	Error	EL Gateway fixture FIXTURE has operational state that does not match the configuration state. It has configured to be on engine ENGINE. It has been discovered on engine ENGINE and has a type FIXTURE_TYPE
Emergency Lighting gateway present, but not configured in zone	Error	Configuration for EL Gateway Fixture Fixture not found in emergency lighting configuration
Engine configured to be in zone but is not emergency engine	Error	Engine ENGINE does not support emergency lighting, but has a configure zone of ZONE. Configuration is ignored.