Title 24 for Outdoor and Site Lighting

Outdoor lighting has its own power allowances, taken from Table 140.7-A of the Energy Code. They vary by lighting zone and they layer, so a site with several outdoor uses builds its total from more than one allowance.

Lighting zones come first

Outdoor allowances are not a single national number. They are set per lighting zone, so the same car park is permitted different installed power depending on the zone the site sits in. Establishing the zone is the first step in an outdoor calculation, before any fitting is selected.

The allowances layer

This is the part most often missed. The total permitted power for a site is built by combining allowances rather than picking one. A sales lot with frontage layers the general hardscape allowance, the outdoor sales lot allowance and the outdoor sales lot frontage allowance — with restrictions on where the frontage and sales-lot power may actually be used, so the credit cannot simply be pooled and spent anywhere on site.

What counts as hardscape

Broader than paving. Any surface enhanced to accommodate parking or travel is hardscape — gravel, pavers, asphalt, cement, pervious or non-pervious. A gravel overflow car park is therefore in the calculation, which surprises owners who assumed only sealed surfaces counted.

Controls apply outdoors too

Outdoor lighting controls have their own acceptance test on the NRCA-LTO form, performed by a certified lighting controls technician. So a site lighting scheme carries the same end-of-project testing commitment as the indoor scheme.

Where projects go wrong

Treating the site as an afterthought. Outdoor lighting is often designed late, by a different party, after the indoor compliance is settled — and it arrives with its own allowance, its own zone, its own layering rules and its own test. Bringing it into the submittal at the same time as the indoor scheme avoids a second round of corrections.