What's Daylight Harvesting?

Daylight Harvesting = Intelligent Energy Saving Dimming

The basic concept of Daylight Harvesting is really simple: When sufficient daylight is available, the artificial light automatically dims to the appropriate level. The possible savings in a professional installation are impressive.

Daylight Harvesting saves energy without compromising comfort

A well designed Daylight Harvesting system guarantees a preset light level at your workplace at all times. The artificial light only starts to dim when this guaranteed light level is exceeded by the overall amount of light (artifical + daylight). As a consequence, dimming only takes place when there is more than the required light anyway and when you have correct light level on your workplace. Daylight Harvesting comes with a few basic requirements which make or break a system. Read about some Do's and Dont's of Daylight Harvesting >>

Daylight Harvesting is becoming a standard requirement

In many countries around the world, Daylight Harvesting has already become a standard requirement of the Building Codes, especially for new buildings but also more and more for refurbishments.

Daylight Harvesting reduces peak demand

High peaks in the demand curve are a major problem - both for consumers (who have to pay higher tariffs) and for utilities (who have to build stronger electricity networks). The highest energy savings with Daylight Harvesting typically coincide with the peak aircon cooling hours of the day. Therefore, Daylight Harvesting is a highly effective strategy for any country that faces peak demand problems. Utilities can use Daylight Harvesting on a large scale to push down peak demand.

Why is Daylight Harvesting not used in many more places today?

Mainly because most available systems are too complicated, too unreliable and too expensive: Planning requires special skills, installation takes too long and is too expensive, commissioning, diagnostics and service are time consuming. Large installations can also show instable control behaviour.

This applies especially to the solutions that the major lighting companies try to sell to you: They use whatever mass products they have for other applications and try to make them work for Daylight Harvesting, too. This approach is full of compromises and makes things complicated, inefficient and expensive.

All of these barriers are finally overcome by DAYTRONIC.

Read more about DAYTRONIC >>