Atea Offices, Stavanger, Norway
CHALLENGE: As a smart office solution showcase, Norwegian IT systems integrator Atea, wanted its new building to be able to demonstrate to their customers what they could do with a converged infrastructure and its various “plays.”
INFLUENCE: Atea sales manager, Kjetil Vasbø, notes that the IT industry in Norway is very old-fashioned, and it is a big advantage to be able to demonstrate a more modern approach to building management in a real-world setting. But because the building also houses Atea’s Stavanger workforce, the company was conscientious of employee comfort and productivity.
SOLUTION: The building uses an Interact connected lighting system from Signify not only to illuminate the working environment but also to collect data on the building’s workspaces and the activities taking place within them. The building currently contains around 700 luminaires—including Philips PowerBalance PoE troffers and Philips CoreLine LED downlights from Signify—which are equipped with multi-sensors for measuring environmental factors such as presence, temperature, daylight levels and humidity.
In addition to high-quality, energy-efficient LED lighting and insights for businesses into performance and energy usage, the system offers personalization, productivity and bio-adaptive lighting features.
Atea staff can:
- Use smartphones to change lighting and temperature above their specific desks—creating the perfect working environment.
- Use “indoor positioning” tech embedded in the lights to find free workspaces, available meeting rooms, navigate around the floor and even pinpoint the location of colleagues.
- Receive a boost in energy levels through bio-adaptive lighting—brighter, bluer lights can energize staff in the mornings, with softer lighting toward the end of day can help staff relax.
- Connect to high-speed internet through LiFi.
- Analyze how space across the office is used through sensors that show occupancy rates across buildings, floors, or even at desk level.
“At Atea, we’re constantly evolving by trying and testing our own products and our partners’ products,” says Espen Riska, Director at Atea Stavanger. “In addition to establishing a living lab, it has been crucial to create an environment great for us to work in, to support the employee’s individual needs. And, of course, to focus on the environmental issues we are all facing—we have one single network powering our lighting and our WiFi, getting information from all the sensors. It’s one single converged network.”
The connected lighting system is an integral component of the building’s IoT platform. Connected luminaires and their multi-sensors transmit data via the IP network, which is deployed using Cisco Ethernet switches. Many of the building’s luminaires connect to the converged infrastructure using Power-over-Ethernet (PoE).
The building uses an Interact connected lighting system from Signify, not only to illuminate the working environment, but also to collect data on workspaces and the activities taking place within them. The building currently contains around 700 luminaires—including Philips Power-Balance PoE troffers and Philips CoreLine LED downlights from Signify—which are equipped with multi-sensors for measuring environmental factors such as presence, temperature, daylight levels and humidity. “You will always need light, so why not utilize the ceiling and put in sensors connected to the same infrastructure?”
With sensors collecting information from the lit environment on everything from temperature to humidity to occupancy, the building generates a large amount of data. The challenge is what kind of data to collect, how often to collect it, how to store/remove it and how to analyze it. One approach that has worked well for them is the digital twin. A three-dimensional model of a space that you can move through in the same way that you can move through a virtual world in a first-person video game, engineers at Atea, in fact, created their twin by putting the architect’s 3D building information model (BIM) into a gaming engine. “You can think of the digital twin as a bridge between the physical and digital worlds,” explains system architect Bjelland. “This pairing of the virtual and physical worlds allows analysis of data and monitoring of systems to head off problems before they even occur.
Real-time sensor data from sensors appears in the digital twin as temperature and humidity measurements, while real-time data from the building management system shows how much power the building is using. Data feeds from weather and other informational websites show conditions outdoors, alongside such information as power generated by solar cells on the roof and CO2 levels per building floor.
BIO LIGHTING: Getting the proper light throughout the day is crucial for maintaining the human body’s natural circadian rhythm, which governs alertness and a healthy sleep-wake cycle. To support employee well-being, a glass-roofed atrium in the center of the building introduces generous natural light. The atrium roof also features a bio-adaptive lighting application that uses dynamic Color Kinetics ColorGraze MX Powercore LED luminaires from Signify together with Interact Office software to reinforce employees’ circadian health. The lighting slowly changes intensity and color temperature depending on the hour of the day. Employees can personalize the lighting and other environmental factors such as temperature using the Signify Personal Control App (PCA), which leverages the building’s indoor positioning system, multi-sensors and HVAC integration.
Project Specs
Atea Offices, Stavanger, Norway // Lighting Design: Signify // Photography: Signify // Lighting + Controls: Interact Office from Signify; Philips PowerBalance PoE troffers; Philips CoreLine LED downlights from Signify.
This article was originally published with the headline "A ‘Living Lab’ to the Future."
