Publications received
Publications received
SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND NATURAL VENTILATION
FOOD FOR SPECIFIERS
Substainable cities and natural ventilation-
held in Lisbon, Portugal in June 1998, dealt with the issues of sustainability and environmental friendliness at the city scale. The proceedings from the conference: Environmentally Friendly Cities (704 pp, £65/$105, ISBN 1-873936-81-8) cover topics like solar architecture, daylighting, passive cooling and natural ventilation, energy and environmental impact of building materials, etc.
The environmental, economic, and health/comfort benefits (for occupants) of ventilating buildings naturally, rather than mechanically, are becoming increasingly recognized. The findings of a major European collaborative project, the AIOLOS project, have been described in a book: Natural Ventilation in Buildings Ð A Design Handbook (368 pp, £50/$75, ISBN 1-873936-72-9). The AIOLOS project, organized under the auspices of the Altener Programme of DGXVII (Energy directorate) of the European Commission to promote the use of natural ventilation, was conceived to create educational material on the efficient use of passive ventilation for buildings. The resulting publication provides building professionals with the knowledge, tools and information necessary to allow them to design for energy-efficient climate control systems that offer improved indoor thermal comfort and air quality.
Both books can be ordered from:
James & James (Science Publishers)
Ltd, 35-37 William Road,
London NW1 3ER, UK
Tel: +44 171 387 8558, Fax: +44 171 387 8998
E-mail: james@jxj.com
Food for specifiers-
Specifiers Reports: Photosensors describes the new response functions researchers derived from testing photosensors and ballasts. The report demonstrates how these functions can help predict the light output from photosensor-controlled systems. Because photosensors are often difficult to install and adjust properly in daylighting applications, the report also suggests strategies for dealing with these problems and achieving energy savings with photosensors.
In Specifier Reports Supplements: Exit Signs test results for more than 40 exit signs and 10 retrofit conversion kits that have come on the North-American market since 1995 are provided. Exit sign manufacturers nowadays often use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as light sources because they have a longer life and are more energy efficient than incandescent or fluorescent lamps. LED exit signs are now frequently available in green as well as red.
The most recent Specifier Reports: Lighting Circuit Power Reducers (September 1998) presents test data on the effects of lighting-circuit power reducers on fluorescent lighting systems and information about lighting-circuit power reducers for HID lighting systems. The report describes autotransformer and electronic lighting circuit power reducers, which are intended to save energy by reducing voltage to the lighting system, and explains how using lighting circuit power reducers can affect power quality, ballast and lamp life, and THD. It also presents information on energy-saving alternatives such as energy-saving lamps, T8 lamps and electronic ballasts, and dimming electronic ballasts.
Also from NLPIP, the Guide to Selecting Frequently Switched T8 Fluorescent Lamp-Ballast Systems helps lighting specifiers understand how different ballast types affect lamp operating life. For example, most specifiers believe that instant-start electronic ballasts for T8 lamps shorten lamp life, but performance data in this guide show that this is not necessarily so. When operating cycles are short, which is often the case in occupancy sensor-controlled spaces, lamps installed in instant-start ballasts can last as long as those installed in rapid-start ballasts and use less energy besides.
The reports can be ordered from:
Lighting Research Center,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,
Troy, NY 12180-3590, USA.
Tel: +1 518 276 8716.
Fax: +1 518 276 2999.
E-mail: lrc@rpi.edu