Victoria Gate in the city center of Leeds is part of Victoria Leeds, which brings together Victoria Quarter and Victoria Gate, and is considered one of the premier shopping districts in northern England. Victoria Gate opened in 2016 and includes, a multi-story car park alongside glass roof arcades with a mix of fashion, home and beauty shops, and a range of restaurants.
During design and construction, particular importance was attached to the highest sustainability and energy efficiency standards to achieve a “BREEAM Excellent” rating. In the area of lighting, LED modules, DALI LED drivers, and above all the Encelium Lighting Management System have made a significant contribution towards achieving this goal.
BREEAM is the world’s leading sustainability assessment method for master planning projects, infrastructure, and buildings. It recognizes and reflects the value in higher performing assets across the built environment lifecycle, from new construction to in-use and refurbishment.
MEP and Electrical engineering Consultant Hoare Lea set-out clear guidelines for the Victoria Gate lighting solutions: they needed to be energy-efficient, durable, easy to maintain, and cost-effective, being fully automated and incorporating an emergency lighting solution. For lighting partner Southgate Lighting, to opt for the versatile Encelium system along with DALI LED drivers and LED modules from OSRAM meant a highly reliable total solution that met all the specified requirements.
The center operator Hammerson benefits sustainably from a modern shop lighting system that is attractive and comfortable for its visitors and at the same time cost-saving and economical – not only in terms of energy savings but also saving time, maintenance costs, and resources.
More flexibility, more control, more energy savings with Encelium – the light management system for intelligent buildings
In this particular Encelium installation, a wireless mesh network based on the Zigbee® standard and DALI (digital addressable lighting interface) was used for entire building lighting control. Thanks to the scalability of the system architecture, it works with any building size and also for whole property estates – and is easy to integrate into existing building management systems.
The core element of the Encelium System is the interactive Polaris software, which facilitates the commissioning, usage, and data analysis of the lighting installation, and provides comprehensive control of the whole lighting system via remote access, including energy monitoring.
Comprehensive lighting control throughout Victoria Gate shopping center with the Polaris software
With the Encelium System, all luminaires and lighting components in the Victoria Gate shopping center – both in the shopping areas and in the car park – can be centrally controlled and monitored. With the Polaris software, Encelium enables a flexible definition of luminaire groups and lighting scenes such as time of day, opening hours, seasons, special events, or sales promotions.
DALI ensures convenient and cost-efficient controlling and monitoring
In the car park, above all optimum safety and energy efficiency played a major role. The lighting follows cars and pedestrians according to their presence and movement, thus showing them the way and enabling safe and comfortable movement at all times – and behind them, the light goes out again after a pre-determined time. The wired Encelium solution at Victoria Gate is the only light management system on the market that offers comfort zoning. In addition, it has an automated emergency lighting solution – a particularly important requirement as the Victoria Gate car park is largely unmanned, unlike the shopping areas, which are manned and monitored 24 hours a day.
With the Encelium DALI-based light management system, it is much easier to detect and work with lighting faults. It provides many self-test functions for diagnosing and reporting faults and allows for the user-friendly creation of a variety of reports.
Andy McCulloch, Technical Services Manager at Victoria Leeds, talks about his experiences with the Encelium System and in particular with the Polaris software, which is simple and intuitive to use and greatly facilitates the work of building managers:
“There are building zonal maps and floor plans for each area enabling you to go onto any level or floor and explore these for energy savings, reduction in lighting levels and electricity consumption data, and much more. Overall I am very impressed with the functions and tools that enable us to view single sensors and light fittings in detail. Fault identification is also a great feature. Where a fault occurs it directs you to the location on the system and allows you to run test signals, a nice feature allows you to “wink” and flash the faulty light so it can be easily viewed from the desktop. This really saves us time compared with a conventionally wired system where we would need to refer to plans in order to identify defective lights and where they are located. With the Encelium System, you can quickly “drill down” into the faults with a few easy clicks, instead of sending an engineer to investigate.”
Daniel Tully, Victoria Leeds Business Support Manager, who manages the car park, is as impressed with the Encelium system: “With the wired Encelium solution the emergency lighting testing can be done from the server and the computer, instead of walking around the whole site – that’s an immense labor reduction for us. All can be done from the computer, and any fault, no matter how minor, can be extracted as a document that can be used for audit purposes.”
OSRAM PrevaLED linear LED modules and DALI LED drivers contributed to attractive and energy-efficient lighting
Lighting contractor and OEM lighting manufacturer Southgate Lighting used several of its own luminaire fittings around the entire shopping center, equipped with perfectly matching OSRAM PrevaLED Linear LED-modules in 2 different lengths – 280mm with 1100 lumen output and 560mm with 2200 lumen output – and corresponding DALI LED drivers. Southgate Linear IP65 1500 mm fittings are used for the car park, back of house corridor, and plant rooms. Southgate Wall Packs illuminate the roof area and Southgate Hayley Downlighters illuminate the management suite and toilet areas.
Southgate chose OSRAM because of the great performance and reliability of their LED modules and LED drivers. Also, the lumens per watt i.e. efficiency of the LEDs was set very high by the requirements for meeting the BREEAM Excellent certification.
Client: Hammerson UK – Victoria Leeds
Architect: ACME Watch Victoria Gate Construction 1 on Vimeo
Clients MEP Consultant/Electrical engineering consultants: Hoare Lea
Principal Contractor: Sir Robert McAlpine
MEP Contractor/Electrical contractor: A.F. Connell
MEP Design: Waterman Building Services
Lighting/OEM partner: Southgate Lighting