Member of EnOcean Alliance Wins Double Award at M&E 2009

For the ‘Best innovation in green product or service’ award judges were looking at products and services that have a significant effect on the environmental impact of a working building. The ‘Best innovation in building services’ award was open to exhibitors that have introduced an innovative product or service to the building services market within the last 12 months. Entries were required to display how their product provides a practical and sustainable solution for a building services issue.

Commenting on the awards, Ian Townsend, UK Commercial Manager at PEHA, said: “The ability to control demand-driven lighting and energy savings in buildings is the winning feature of the SENSOLUX solar detector, and we are delighted that it has been recognised and honoured with these two awards.”

The service-free and energy-autonomous SENSOLUX solar detector enables control of lighting according to demand and is governed by the presence of occupants. It registers the presence of persons, measures the momentary light level and then transmits the data wirelessly to a switching actuator capable of managing up to eight presence detectors and eight wireless switches. As soon as the last person has left a room the lights are turned off. Lights also go off once a specified level of daylight is reached. If desired, users can intervene at any time and set their preferred level of lighting manually. In addition to stand-alone applications, the SENSOLUX presence detector will integrate into building management on a number of different bus gateways.

This detector is based on EnOcean's STM 110 module which derives its energy from powerful indoor solar cells. It is battery-less meaning that no cables need to be laid, and it can be relocated in a matter of minutes with no troublesome dirt and dust or noise disturbance.

The innovative nature of EnOcean technology is its ability to work entirely maintenance-free without batteries. By harvesting the necessary power from its surroundings – from linear motion, light or differences in temperature, for example – data can be detected and then transmitted by short-range wireless over a distance of up to 30 meters within buildings and 300 meters in a free field. The amount of energy obtained in this way is enough to send a wireless signal and turn on a light for instance.