Toggled smart building controls save energy

  • October 25, 2021
  • Steve Rogerson

Michigan software company Altair has launched a range of smart-building controls through its Toggled subsidiary.

The Toggled iQ smart building platform is said to improve building facilities management, increase energy efficiency, improve tenant satisfaction and reduce costs.

The connected building data and device management offering leverages the IoT to help businesses optimise their building environments by streamlining operations and reducing their carbon footprint through the connection of smart connected lighting with wireless sensors, controls and intuitive analytics.

Energy use is the largest operating expense for businesses, representing approximately one third of budgets, and negatively drives building operations’ impact on climate change. To help organisations tackle this problem, Toggled iQ can reduce energy through an easy-to-install smart building platform. Its electronics and software apply to various use cases including direct-wire LED retrofits, lighting control, HVAC, remote sensors and smart building control.

“Most businesses want to make sustainability improvements to their building operations, but complexity and other concerns have stood in their way,” said Daniel Hollenkamp Junior, chief operating officer at Toggled. “We’ve tackled the problem through an engineering-first approach, while leveraging our proven success in LED lighting. The result is specifically designed to simplify and accelerate adoption, while giving end users more control over their smart-building environment. We deliver value from the onset and provide a flexible infrastructure for the future, which we believe are the keys to driving smart building adoption.”

Toggled says iQ has become a complete sustainable building ecosystem, which allows organisations to customise and control their lighting in real time, whether it be a single fixture, room, building or group of properties, all from a mobile app. With direct-wire LEDs, users can upgrade their fluorescent lighting and reduce energy consumption by up to 60 per cent. Pairing the lighting with sensors, switches and soon-to-be-released controllers results in savings of 80 per cent or more. Additionally, users can create their own scalable smart building environment, which gives them the power to reduce their carbon footprint.

“When organisations turn to smart technologies to more efficiently manage their building operations, they often deploy systems without considering existing connectivity capabilities, interoperability or the infrastructure requirements,” said Gerry Cellucci, principal of Yorkland Controls. “Toggled iQ’s approach is smart from the start, allowing building owners and operators to easily integrate lighting and smart devices to existing or new IoT and building automation systems, while also providing a scalable solution that can be easily modified in the future.”

Toggled is a software-focused company that delivers smart building management to ensure consistent product quality and user satisfaction. Because the system is wireless, users don’t have to tear up the office space during installation. It works with a range of common protocols such as Bacnet IP and Modbus allowing for seamless BMS and HVAC integration. Designed with end user functionality in mind, users can modify the smart system to suit their needs and preferences now and into the future.

The wireless system doesn’t require additional hardwiring and allows for device groupings during setups to improve overall commissioning times. A user-friendly app has a setup wizard to make users aware of each device’s available features.

The app lets users customise their lighting and building preferences through room scene creation, colour-tuning and dimming, motion control sensitivity levels, and smart building analytics.

There are multiple layers of energy savings:

  • Fluorescent to LED conversions.
  • Network controls features include motion and daylight harvesting.
  • Back-end analytics provide data insights to optimise energy usage, identify active problem areas, and proactively establish maintenance schedules to ensure devices are working at their optimal efficiency levels.

The LED tubes are guaranteed to last 50,000 hours. Additionally, LED products contain no mercury and require no special handling during their end-of-life disposal.

Formed in 2007, Toggled leverages the design and engineering strength of parent company Altair, and holds more than 150 patents in LED lighting, optics, communication and control, physics, and power conversion circuitry.

Toggled is a registered trademark brand of Ilumisys, a wholly owned subsidiary of Altair.

At this week’s LightFair show in New York, Altair launched the Toggled iQ area lighting controller and plug load controller. Both are included within the Toggled iQ portfolio on the DesignLights Consortium NLC networked lighting controls qualified products list.