An improved control algorithm for lighting systems by using PSO

The purpose of this study is to develop an control algorithm for lighting systems which can generate uniform and satisfying illumination environment for office buildings and save considerable energy as well. In our previous research, we developed an energy saving algorithm which can successfully optimize the lighting systems in small sized offices. However when it came to the deep-plan office cases with large amount of luminaires, the algorithm suffered from the weakness of low speed and unstable output. In this paper, we introduce an improved control strategy for lighting systems with large amount of luminaires. The strategy defines a new characteristic value "Importance" for each luminaire and divides the luminaires into appropriate groups according to this value. After the grouping, an improved PSO algorithm is executed to optimize the dimming ratio for luminaires according to the target illuminance in occupied areas. The high speed and effectiveness of the proposed control method for lighting systems is verified by simulations in a lighting system simulator, and the superiority of this improved PSO based control algorithm is indicated in comparison with both traditional control method and prototype PSO control algorithm in our previous work.