MRC Cambridge

Delmatic has provided a lighting management system for the new Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge.  LMB Is one of the most prestigious multidisciplinary laboratory and research centres in the world, and is the birthplace of modern molecular biology. Many techniques have been pioneered at the laboratory, including DNA sequencing.  Scientists working at the LMB scientists have won nine Nobel prizes, dozens of Royal Society awards and numerous other scientific honours.

The building is designed to optimise energy efficiency through a number of means including renewable energy, heat recovery wheels which exchange energy between outgoing and incoming air, blinds that minimise heat build-up, and an intelligent lighting management system that reduces light intensity when daylight is available and also controls lighting availability according to occupancy.

The Delmatic Dali lighting management system controls and manages lighting throughout the LMB building, providing individual Dali addressable switching, dimming and monitoring of some 14,000 Dali luminaires.  In addition, the system supports testing and monitoring of some 3,500 Dali emergency fittings equipped with Em-Pro ballasts.  The high level of addressability within the system has enabled the designers to establish control parameters that best suit the design and usage of each area.  The dimming function enables illuminance levels to be adjusted to suit activities conducted within specific areas.   The result is a highly flexible system that can be easily adjusted as function or requirements change within different areas of the building. 

The Delmatic system is fully software-configurable via graphical head-end software.  A number of operating scenarios have been set up to optimise building efficiency and convenience/comfort of occupants.  

 Occupants in each of the laboratories can adjust lighting to suit the task being carried out or their individual preference, while scheduled off-sweeps (with dimming warning sequences) ensure that when there’s nobody in the lab, the lights go off.   

The system incorporates Dali presence detectors and Dali multisensors within all office, support and write up areas which provide absence detection and daylight linking to maximise energy efficiency.  To optimise building energy efficiency, Delmatic presence detectors pass on information relating to occupancy of individual areas to the building Building Management System (BMS) to ensure heating/cooling is linked to out-of-hours occupancy and only used where required.

The system incorporates a corridor hold function to local corridors, main circulation corridors, staircases and atrium in a cascaded control strategy, enabling safe illuminated access from working area to the building exits.  A night set back mode enables security night lighting to be activated in unoccupied areas throughout the building to allow safe passage for security and provide background lighting for security cameras.

The Delmatic system provides extensive real time monitoring of the installation including individual lamp failure, ballast failure and emergency monitoring failure of every luminaire in the building including lighting in plant areas and basement link tunnels. The system incorporates powerful scene set dimming within seminar rooms and lecture theatres. 

The Delmatic Dali modules, luminaires and sensors are connected via a Wieland modular wiring distribution network. The modular Delmatic hardware hosts full distributed-intelligence functionality: this feature, coupled with the plug-in connectivity of the network modular wiring, proved beneficial for the initial installation and will assist in rapid plug-and-play maintenance which is critical in a world-class laboratory environment.