What Are Title 24 Lighting Controls?

They are the mandatory automatic controls on nonresidential lighting — shutoff, occupant sensing, daylight response and demand response. They are part of what a project documents, not an installation detail.

Automatic shutoff is the baseline

Nonresidential indoor lighting requires automatic shutoff control. That is the floor, not an upgrade, and it means the control arrangement forms part of the compliance submittal alongside the fitting schedule. A drawing set that shows fittings but not what switches them is incomplete for this purpose.

Where occupant sensing is required

Not everywhere, but in a specific named list: warehouse areas, library stack aisles, corridors and stairwells, offices greater than 250 square feet, and parking and loading/unloading areas.

Corridors and stairwells catch projects out most often, because they are circulation rather than occupied space and are easy to leave off a controls scope.

The zoning rule that decides pass or fail

For multi-zone occupant sensing in an office larger than 250 square feet, control zones must be 600 square feet or less. When a zone is unoccupied the lighting in it must reduce by at least 80 per cent at the preset time delay, and when every zone is unoccupied the controlled lighting must switch off at the preset delay.

This is why a single sensor covering a large open-plan office fails: the sensor may work perfectly and the zoning still be non-compliant.

Daylight and demand response

Daylight responsive controls dim or switch lighting in response to available daylight, and they are also one of the measures that can earn a Power Adjustment Factor. Demand response controls allow lighting load to be reduced on signal. Both are separately tested.

All of it is acceptance tested

Occupant sensing and time switches, daylight response and demand response each have their own NRCA form, performed on site by a technician certified for lighting controls. Controls are the discipline where the gap between what is specified and what is installed shows up most, which is precisely why they are tested rather than taken on trust.