We would special appreciate the support given by Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering Prof. Sisil Kumarawadu and Project Coordinator Dr. Rasara Samarasinghe for allocating time in academic calendar for project work and advising laboratory staff to assist our project work. Our sincere gratitude also goes to all the staff members for providing valuable ideas about the areas which we should concern more. They were really helpful for fine tune our project.
We are thankful for all the non-academic staff members of laboratories of Department of Electrical Engineering University of Moratuwa and specially appreciate the support provided by Power System Laboratory staff and the Measurement Laboratory staff.
Finally we would like to thank all colleagues for their support during the project. In addition we would like to extent our gratitude for our parents, families and others who have not been mentioned here.
Project supervisor
Prof. N. Wickramarachchi
Dean
Faculty of Engineering
University of Moratuwa.
Group members
G.S.S.Gamage
A.D.K.Geeth
K.S.V.Fernando
N.Y.T.D.Albert
Background of the project
The energy needs in the world increase day by day with the higher growth of the population and the advancing technology.And electricity is the main type of end uses energy source which is used to fulfil energy need. A Bigger portion of world’s energy need is fulfilled by non-renewable energy such as coal, fossil fuels and natural gasses.
Using non renewable energy sources such as discussed above increases the carbon dioxide emission. And due to that high carbon dioxide amount, the greenhouse effect will be increases more than its desired value. And that causes the global warming which causes a huge disaster at the given moment by increasing temperature of the earth, climate change, increasing sea level etc. Therefor using the energy in the most efficient way is the best method to save the energy in order to address the problems mentioned above.
More than 90% of human’s life is spent in a building such as office or home. And the energy used in such buildings accounts for a great portion of country’s total energy consumption. And form that amount of energy about 35% to 50% amount of energy is used for lighting purposes in commercial buildings.
Therefor from reducing the energy portion which is needed for lighting purposes, the total amount of energy needed can be reduced.
In order to mainly address that problem this project have been conducted.
Motivation of the project
Sri Lanka is a country which receives plenty of daylight in the day time. But most of the commercial building and houses do not take advantages from that natural energy source. It is a huge wastage that it is not using such a natural energy source in an era such as there is great need of using energy efficiently is a critical fact. Therefor it has been the greatest motivation to do our project.And there are some major problems which occurs when the daylight is been used for lighting purposes in buildings. The heat gain due to the daylight is one of the problems. And the other one is the day light do not remain constant throughout the whole time. It varies through the day and sometimes clouds causes sudden changes in the daylight which fall to the earth surface even though it is the day time. Therefor the problem which mentioned later also has been a motivation to conduct this project.
While the mentioned fact are been the primary motivations for our project, the secondary motivations are that the energy need of the world increases rapidly. So in order to use the energy efficiently, this kind of a system will be needed. And in a busy world, the need of a user friendly system which is easy to use will be highly valuable.
Scope
The scope of our project is to design and build a system which can control the amount of light which an artificial light bulb can produce, so the contribution of that artificial light to the lux level of the working plane of the selected area can be controlled, in a way that the lux level throughout the plane can be maintained in the referenced value which is set by the user, according to the usage of the selected area.The system should be able to control the complete area in zone wise so the lux level throughout the working plane is constant despite amount of the daylight which receive to each zone.
Objectives
Although in our country we get plenty of daylight throughout the day and the seasonal change will not cause that much of a considerable effect to the daylight, clouds will cause the sudden changes of the amount of light that fall to the earth surface. Therefor the intensity of the daylight will rapidly change throughout the day. So the overall goal in our project is to overcome that uncertainty in intensity of daylight when we using it for interior illumination purposes.And the objectives of our project can be categorized as,
- Use daylight for room illumination.
Since daylight is a natural energy source which we can acquire for free of charge and by using it we can reduce the use of non-renewable energy sources which emits a large amount of carbon dioxide. From this method the environmental sustainability will be increased.
- Keep the light level constant in the area according to the amount of daylight that entering that area.
The lighting controlling system which we build in our project will be mostly efficient to the building areas such as large office areas, corridors and halls. Let’s consider an office area as an example. In order to conduct the work in that area the light level through that area should be constant in the desired value. If we didn’t change the light level which receives from the artificial lightings, with the presence of daylight, the total amount of the light level which receives from both of the sources will not be uniform throughout the working plane. Therefor in this project it is one of our objective is to keep the light level constant at a desired value according to the type of work carried out in that area, with the presence of daylight.
- Saving energy by using a smart controlling system.
With the world gets busier day by day, it will be an advantage if the systems that humans deal with will be easier in controlling due to the lack of time. A smart system is a system which perform all the three functions which divided as sensing, actuating and controlling by its own without any interaction of a human. So in our project we considered it as one of the objectives to build the lighting controlling system in a smart manner so it will be easier for the users who are dealing with the system.
If we consider an office area as an example and let’s consider an incident when there is no one presence in the area and the lights are still on in its full brightness. In this incident the lights can be switched off in order to save the energy. And in an incident where there is plenty of daylight incidence in the working area, but the artificial light bulbs are on at its full brightness level making the total light level of the working plane more than its desired value. Both of the incidents described above are examples to the waste of energy. So making the lighting controlling system smart, all the functions can be controlled automatically without any interaction with the users and the energy wastage can be reduced.
- Increase occupant satisfaction.
When people are performing a task, it is a critical fact that the light level of the working area is at the desired value in order to perform that task in an effective manner. Because if the light level is less than the desired value then it will create difficulties to concentrate to the work because the low light level causes some boundaries with health facts.
So by maintaining the light level in a desired value, the occupant satisfaction can be increased and the working performance of the occupant can be maintained in an effective manner. Therefor in order to increase the occupant satisfaction we carried out this project as making the light level constant in a desired value as one of our objectives.
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