Nearly everything is harder in the dark. This is especially true when it’s an emergency and you or a loved one is seeking to exit a building you or they may never have visited before. When living is measured in minutes of time to exit, a wrong turn is not just a mistake, it could be the last one you ever make.
Of course, exit signs exist that show a specific door, but look around your office or building. Can you clearly see an exit sign? Lighting ensures you can and there are three basic ways that emergency lighting is added to a facility – stand-alone lights, usually located near an exit sign, installed along normal lighting, or integrated into the lighting.
For nearly 10 years, Fulham has worked to innovate products that make customers safer and more secure while helping building management people to get as close as possible to ‘install and forget’ emergency lighting.
For example, Fulham’s newest integrated solution, the HotSpot Plus was designed to meet European specifications in an all-in- one package – LED driver, emergency driver/inverter and battery backup. The all-in-one solution eliminates typical wiring and installation nightmares usually associated with emergency lighting circuits.
HotSpot Plus is one single case unit; it could not be simpler. The extremely compact unit even has an integrated, replaceable battery with 12-hour recharge and a discharge capacity to power a programable 1W (9 hours) to 6W (180 minutes) – enough to meet governmental regulations across Europe. To point out an area of innovation, the unit includes automatic self-test to fully complying with the European standards for monthly and annual test requirements. While the regulations are clear, and fines are assessed for failure to perform and record monthly and annual tests, it is a poorly kept secret that many times the tests are not performed. Maintenance always seems to have something of higher priority to pursue.
The HotSpot Plus units will perform self-test randomly every 30 days as well as do a complete battery drain every year and display the results of a good test with a green LED, and the results of a failure with a red LED. As you or your employees walk through the facility, the sight of a red light can trigger a report to maintenance to x or swap out the emergency light. There is also a test switch that can be used to con rm the previous test if there are any questions. By integrating a driver, emergency driver and battery in a single unit the HotSpot Plus fits into more luminaires and is ready for the continued miniaturization of lighting.
There are many additional innovations in the product that make it economically superior for distributors, OEMs and contractors to integrate, sell and use.
T: 0044 (0)31 72 572 3000
W: www.fulham.com
