Facilities: Lighting Laboratory

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The Lighting and Electrical Systems Laboratory is a 149 m2 (1,600 ft2) space designed for teaching and research. It has seating for 30 students, and includes state-of-the-art computer projection and audio-visual equipment.

Ten complete overhead lighting systems illuminate the central teaching area, which can be enclosed with motorized shades. Examples of fluorescent, incandescent, and high intensity discharge systems are included, which are controlled by a Lutron Grafik Eye 5000 dimming system. The layouts are designed to study the spatial and spectral distribution of light in building interiors.

The west end of the laboratory is an office mock up area, approximately 6 m (20 ft) by 5 m (16 ft). It can be configured as a single conference room or two side-by-side offices by rearranging demountable partitions. Two dedicated dimming panels control the electrical supply. Electrical performance can be quantified using a current transformer connected to each panel’s feeder. Receptacles in the ceiling provide 24 separate circuits for the lighting in the mock-up area, all of which are fully dimmable.

The laboratory is equipped with several Minolta T-1M illuminance meters, a Minolta CS-100 Chroma meter, Minolta LS-100 and LS-110 luminance meters, a LightSpex handheld spectroradiometer, two EPP200C spectroradiometers from Stellarnet, a ProMetric 1600 digital image photometer system from Radiant Imaging, a CM-2600d spectrophotometer from Minolta, and a custom-designed trichromatic colorimeter. The laboratory is also equipped with a spectral lamp measurement system, consisting of a six-foot integrating sphere from Labsphere, a diode array spectrometer, AC and DC power supplies, a 3-element power meter, and two reference ballasts. The system is used to measure the electrical and spectral characteristics of lamps, including spectral power distribution, lumen output, color rendering, and color temperature.

The laboratory also includes powered and non-powered electrical equipment to help students transfer from electrical theory to applied electrical engineering. The unpowered building electrical distribution equipment includes a main distribution panel, motor control center, 480Y/277V panelboard, step-down transformer, 208Y/120V panelboard, transient voltage surge suppressors, conductors and conduit. Although these components are not powered, they are connected and grounded identically to an actual distribution system. Students can work with the internal components of the system to understand how lecture concepts like distribution, voltage transformation, over-current protection, and grounding are actually implemented.

The powered part of the laboratory includes a motor and starter to study motor starting currents and protection, capacitors to study power factor correction, an automatic transfer switch, enabling the study of power quality and harmonic distortion. The electrical system is monitored by a Square-D Powerlogic circuit monitor that allows detailed measurement and waveform capture of the laboratory electrical system. This monitor and software interfaces with the computer projection system, providing a dramatic depiction of power quality, harmonic distortion, motor starting and power factor correction.