Emergency Lightning

Emergency lightning is important

The purpose of emergency lighting is to provide visibility and direction of the escape route, to people that is not familiarized with the locality. Emergency lighting should preserve the constant intensity of light in at least 30 minutes without a constant source of energy. An optimal intensity of light will enable activities to continue in a situation with no electricity, and safely illuminate the room. This is called reserve lighting, which is also categorized as emergency lighting.

Reserve lighting should not under any circumstances decrease its intensity of light to being less than 10 % of the normal lighting and not under 15 lux. Reserve lighting is used at facilities where the normal activities cannot be continued or ended safely, in the situation of a power failure. This applies especially to facilities that produce or manage inflammable, corrosive or in other ways dangerous chemicals. Factories or construction sites with machines that will continue to run, even after a power failure, are also advised to have reserve lighting.

Every single organisation or facility that handles materials or machines that falls under the category of being potentially dangerous, will have to be evaluated individually. Reserve lighting should overall become operative and prevent any dangerous situation from occurring.

Escape route lighting, which is also categorized as emergency lighting, is more commonly known than the above-mentioned reserve lighting. Escape route lighting includes the illumination of exit signs and panic lighting. The illumination of exit signs is constant, and the signs are placed above or remarkably close to emergency exits. The signs is constantly illuminated or be a lighting unit.

The exit signs should provide a clear sight of the escape route that ends in the terrain outside the building. The quality of exit lighting signs can be measured through the European standard EN 1838:1999 and hereafter the formula d = S ” p. (d: reading distance, p: the height of the sign, and S: which is a constant with the value 100 for externally lighted signs and the value 200 for internally lighted exit sign units). Panic lighting is a ‘replacement light’ that turns on in case of a power failure and provides a minimum intensity of light of 1 lux along with the escape route.

Panic lighting units can also be placed outside and is fitted in a way that the light is not blinding people walking or crawling along the escape route. Just like the reserve lighting, every case needs to be evaluated individually by an expert as different buildings and facilities requires different emergency lighting. Numerous factors has to be considered, like the number of exposed employees and the structural construction of the facility itself. At Lumega we project complete emergency lighting solutions. We plan and compose the complete solution, based on the customers’ individual needs.