ABB has unveiled its latest monitoring system, Naveo®Pro, which allows users to install, monitor and maintain emergency systems with a mobile app. We spoke to Peter Beckingham, Product Marketing Specialist at ABB, to find out how the latest breed of intelligent emergency lighting systems allow contractors to save time, budget and red tape.
There are strict regulations around installing, maintaining and testing battery-powered emergency lighting systems, and for good reason – they have the potential to save lives. But what are the pain points when it comes to these systems?
Inspecting an emergency lighting system in an average secondary school, hospital or commercial building can require days of labour every month to manually check every luminaire individually and record their condition in the building’s safety record log to meet BS5266 - EN 50172 / IEC 62034. In addition, you must carry out an annual inspection to test the battery packs are able to provide a full three hours duration of power for luminaires.
In practice, manual testing can take up to seven working days every month for a typical secondary school or hospital, including the time needed to order replacement filaments or batteries where needed.
How does the latest breed of emergency lighting monitoring and testing systems reduce this time spent testing?
Today’s state-of-the-art, digital emergency lighting luminaires are connected to each other and the gateway via hard-wired communication lines. The gateway then connects to a database in the cloud via a 4G or 5G router or a dedicated IP line. In turn, the database serves reporting, alerts and status data via an app that is compatible with smartphones and tablets.
This app covers all functionality – for example, checking the status of luminaires, accessing test reports and alerts for faulty luminaires.
Are installation times also reduced?
The biggest difference with previous systems is that this app also supports commissioning. Luminaires are supplied with identification in the form of a QR code – a QR code sticker on the luminaire gives it a unique identification number and three duplicate QR code in the box is supplied in a sticker format of as fitted drawings use.
For previous generations of emergency lighting systems, an electrical contractor would create an excel file spread sheet with addresses and product information as an installation schedule as they work their way through the building. A specialist commissioning contractor would then commission the system via a desktop computer and assign the luminaires on the excel file or schedule with their address number and location in the building.
The new app-based approach means that an electrical contractor can set up a digital version of the building in the app then scan the bar codes directly in and match the luminaire’s location while they’re on site. That cuts out the complexity and large cost involved of hiring in a specialist contractor with programming skills. As a result, a contractor can deliver a job in half the time and with lower commissioning costs.
Can this new breed of system be retrofitted to existing ones?
Systems like our Naveo®Pro are built with this in mind to reassure building owners. We have a large installed base, dating back many years, including our first generation Naveo, Centrel and other older Emergi-Lite and Existalite systems.
It’s possible to add a new-style gateway at any location on an existing system. Each gateway will control up to 500 luminaires, however, there’s no limit to the number of gateways you can install on a system, so it’s possible to scale up the emergency lighting system to whatever size you need or to extend an existing system.
What about compatibility with future developments in emergency lighting systems?
Naveo®Pro is compatible with a future generation of wireless, Bluetooth-connected luminaires that we will launch around late Q3/early Q4 2021, which will help cut down the wiring costs for future projects.