DALI Project: Trust Tower

Trust Tower

Location: Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

DiiA member: Helvar

Featuring a total of 60,000 DALI points and 36,000 DALI light fittings, the huge 65-storey Trust Tower World Trade Centre is 100 % DALI.

A complete Helvar DALI solution was chosen to meet the client’s requirement that the lighting and blind control should be supplied and supported by a single manufacturer. No proprietary protocols were allowed, in order to promote and increase efficiencies across the whole building.

The system has the ability to use the full range of DALI protocol commands and functionality for both day-to-day lighting control and emergency lighting. Using occupancy sensors, the system is also able to automatically switch between day and night modes, depending on the level of presence detected by the sensors.

Helvar’s DALI system offered the level of customisation needed to deploy the different lighting requirements for the retail, hospitality and corporate facilities in the tower. The system allows the creation of different lighting scenes inside and outside of the building, and also controls and monitors the lamp burning hours for the individual lamps.

System integration

One of the main challenges for Helvar and BTMS, the lighting-controls system implementation specialist, was to network 551 DALI routers. This was achieved using Tridium Niagara software, which monitors faults and shows error messages for gear failure, lamp failure and router failure. In addition, the software provides energy-consumption profiles based on selected groups of luminaires, allowing direct landlord billing for energy used.

Sun tracking, blind control and façade

The building features a sophisticated system for controlling the window blinds, and the lighting routers and blind controllers are fully integrated into the DALI system. This allows for full automation of the non-intelligent blind motors through the 490 blind-control modules and automated control of blinds through a sun-tracking algorithm. Correct positioning of the Venetian-style blinds is important to avoid direct sunlight entering the area while still allowing maximum daylight harvesting.

In addition, the interior lighting and blinds can be controlled in a way that allows text to be displayed on the building façade, as demonstrated by the photo for the UAE 41st anniversary.

MORE INFORMATION: ►Helvar website