Shed Community On Your Part Two By Dick Crowe of RW Anderson Services I


n part one (see December 2023 issue) we explored interior lighting. In part two we will dig into exterior community lighting and


their control systems. The lights themselves can be incandescent, metal halide, high-pressure  (ballasted or non-ballasted) or LED technology. Control systems can include photocells, mechanical timers, digital timers or astronomic timers. Understanding what your community has is critical to maintaining full functionality of your system and helping troubleshoot issues.


Four systems are photocells, mechanical timers, digital timers and astronomic timers.


Control Systems Let’s start with control systems. There are four basic control systems for community lighting: photocells, mechanical timers, digital timers and astronomic timers.


 Photocells


The most common community control systems.  PROS – Photocells are a fairly simple switch


which turns the lights on when it gets dark and off when it gets light. Photocells do not  outages or seasonal lighting, making them a very popular option for community lighting. They are fairly inexpensive.


− CONS – Most communities that use photocells have at least one for each building. Depending on the location of the photocell some buildings may turn on before other buildings (depending on how much light there is at each photocell location). We often get calls that one building’s lights are on while another one is off so there must be something wrong. In reality, one


Continued On Page 20  wscai.org 19


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