For hotels, stadia, leisure and shopping centres, these systems give Architects and designers great flexibility in their choice of lighting solutions as there is no requirement to fit additional ballasts to the luminaires. It also allows light sources of almost any type to be used as the emergency lighting making it ideal for LED luminaires or where there are CDM-T, metal halide and SON lamps.
Low energy consumption combines with huge flexibility and performance to deliver solutions for so many types of premises. For assistance with the selection of an appropriate system for your project please contact Simon Perrott Agencies.
Why can’t a UPS be used for emergency lighting systems?
There are specific battery charger and charge time requirements that have to be met by emergency lighting standards that a UPS may not necessarily conform with.
Most importantly though, a UPS is specifically designed to protect critical equipment and systems. In an emergency lighting system there are various faults that might occur whilst it is in operation. There might be a damaged cable, a ballast or LED driver might fail to a short condition or even a lamp filament can fail to a short momentarily.
A UPS would sense any such fault and, because it is designed to protect the connected equipment, it would instantly shut down leaving the whole premises without emergency lighting. A static inverter is designed to deliver sufficient power so that the protective device serving the circuit where the fault occurs will operate and the remainder of the emergency lighting system will continue unaffected.
This is the main reason why a UPS must never be used for emergency lighting systems.
| 
