The Lighting Controls Association (LCA) has added "EE110: Commissioning Lighting Controls" to its online Education Express distance education courses.
On the association's Website, www.aboutlightingcontrols.org, Education Express provides education about lighting control and controllable ballast technology, application, system design, and commissioning, as well as meta-issues, such as commissioning, energy codes, daylighting, and other trends.
Commissioning lighting controls often is a critical component of the design and installation process. If controls are misapplied, installed incorrectly, or do not perform according to design intent, users may bypass them and the owner may remove them entirely. Commissioning is a quality-assurance process used to ensure proper equipment operation, user acceptance, and intended energy savings in new-construction and retrofit projects.
“Benefits of commissioning include reduced energy use, lower operating costs, fewer contractor call backs, better building documentation, improved occupant productivity, and verification that the systems perform in accordance with the owner's project requirements,” according to the U.S. Green Building Council, whose Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System requires commissioning of automatic lighting control and other building-control systems.
The course, authored by lighting industry educator and journalist Craig DiLouie, is broken into five learning modules that describe the fundamentals of the commissioning process, commissioning procedures for occupancy sensors, relay-based time-sweep control systems, architectural dimming control systems, and daylight harvesting control systems. The goal of the course is to provide a working understanding of commissioning and general guidelines that can be used to commission specific types of lighting control systems.
At the conclusion of each of the five modules in the course, an optional online comprehension test is available with automatic grading; a passing grade enables a student to claim education credit. The course is registered with the National Council on Quality in the Lighting Professions (NCQLP), which recognizes a total of 9.0 LEUs toward maintenance of Lighting Certified (LC) certification.