My name is Nick and I am a Masters student. I am emailing you to ask if you would be willing to help me improve my project by helping me on a few issues I am having problems with. I am designing a back-up power supply system for a refuge structure. The structure will hold 1500 people within

4 floors (total 4000m2) and supply them with safety, comfort etc but with minimal costs/consumption etc.

I need to calculate the power consumption for the refuge which will operate for a maximum of 7days, (168hours):

Lighting (Currently I am struggling to calculate this for this structure - 1000m2 floor area), I believe that 200 lux would be a minimal illuminance but still provide enough lighting for all the refugees, since offices normally 300-750lux to provide adequate reading and writing?). Also the use of CFL instead of LED since large area rooms? Will this provide adequate savings?

Furthermore, how would I calculate how many lights are required?

Would I use, Power lighting= E (200lux)/ B.n.n1, where E= illuminance of space?, B= Luminare maintancence factor (0.7 for clean environment?), n= coefficient of utlisation (0.4 for direct lighting?) and n1= lamp efficacy (lm/w, CFL= 50, Fluorescent lamp = 80, LED= 50lm/w?)

Are there any other factors to be considered? Then would I use Wlighting= sum of Plighting X A room X Delta t X f /1000? To get Kwh.

Kind Regards

Hi Nick I am not sure how your question involve fire safety unless its about emergency lighting. If that is the case then emergency lighting is split into emergency escape lighting and standby lighting. Fire safety is involved in emergency escape lighting and not standby lighting which appears to be what your question is about. I think you would be more successful if you find an electrical engineers forum as opposed to ours.

If it was to frighten the proverbial out of us then you have succeeded. :unsure: