Daylight Groups Quick Guide

Audience

Engineers, technicians, and facility managers may use this guide to configure the Energy Manager to take advantage of Daylight Groups in an office environment. See Advanced Daylight Group Configuration for a more advanced understanding of this feature and recommendations for different spaces.

The Goal of Daylight Groups

Create Daylight Groups to provide a uniform dim level across a group of fixtures for improved aesthetics while still gaining energy efficiency by taking advantage of daylight.

Configure Lighting Behavior

The following configuration steps may be performed before or after creating Daylight Groups. Refer to the Manage Admin Guide for more details.

1. Set the Target Ambient Light Level of sensors to Automatically Calibrate Now.
2. Create a lighting profile for all sensors that will be in the Daylight Group.

• Sensors in the Daylight Group will ignore the ambient sensitivity in the profile.
• In the Advanced section of the profile, choose whether to allow daylight harvesting to dim the lights below the Minimum Light Level. See Daylight Harvesting. 

3. Assign the same lighting profile to every sensor in the planned Daylight Group.
4. Create motion, switch, and Plug Load groups as needed.

Motion, switch, and Plug Load groups continue to function independently of the Daylight Group. Create motion groups with the same group of sensors in the Daylight Group to maintain a constant light level.

Create a Daylight Group

1. Select sensors.

From the Floor Plan, select sensors, right-click, Create/Configure Groups, Create Daylight Group.

• A sensor may be part of only one Daylight Group.
• Daylight Groups may span gateways.

2. Choose Average Daylight or Daylight at Master Sensor method for calculating the group light level. Enlighted recommends choosing one of two methods for setting the group light level:

• Average Daylight - Averages the ambient readings and target ambient light levels for all reporting sensors to calculate the light level for the Daylight Group.
• Daylight at Master Sensor - Uses the ambient reading and target ambient light level at the master sensor to calculate the light level for the Daylight Group.

3. Set Group Ambient Sensitivity to 5. A value of 5 will never turn off the lights due to daylight. To use daylight more aggressively, set the value to 10.
4. Keep the default role for each sensor as Report & Act. Sensors in the group will report their ambient reading and act based on the light level set for the group.
5. Click Apply to create the Daylight Group.
6. View Daylight Groups. From the Floor Plan tab, View > Daylight Group. Each group is a different color. Double click the sensor to see the sensor’s Daylight Group Name.
7. Delete or Edit Daylight Groups. From the Groups tab, select Daylight, and delete or edit the desired group.

Daylight Group Interaction with Other Lighting Behavior

• Switches and manual overrides will override daylight group behavior.
• Motion and vacancy settings (Min. Light Level, Max. Light Level, Ramp-up time, Active motion window Dim and Linger, etc.) will still influence light levels if you do not want motion to influence light levels, set Motion Sensitivity to 0.
• Advanced ambient settings in the profile are ignored when sensors are in a Daylight Group.

Limitations and Comments

• Sensors in Daylight Groups must have a good wireless connection to the Energy Manager. If sensors cannot communicate with the Energy Manager for 30 minutes, they will revert to behaving as if they are not in a Daylight Group.
• Daylight Groups require sensor firmware version 5.1 and higher.
• By default, Daylight Groups respond to daylight over a 10 to 30 minute period. Occupants will likely not notice changes to the light levels.

Recommended articles:

• Configuring Advanced Daylight Groups
• Creating a Daylight Group