Helvar Imagine, Industry, ucontrol

Volvo Trucks

Ghent

Helvar Imagine, Industry, ucontrol

The first co2-neutral automotive plant

The world's largest Volvo Trucks plant is located in Ghent, Belgium. More than 40,000 trucks are produced at the plant every year. By installing PV systems, 3 wind turbines, sustainable heating systems and building a passive house, the factory became the world's first CO2-neutral automotive plant.

Saving energy was the main driver to start replacing lighting with LED lighting in 2017. Since 2019, we have been working closely with Rudy Van Leeuwen, Real Estate Manager Electrical Installations Volvo Trucks, to provide the Volvo Trucks production site with a DALI light management system.

"We are not looking for suppliers but partners who think along with our philosophy.

Rudy Van Leeuwen

Why Volvo chose Helvar

The main reasons for Volvo Trucks to choose a Helvar light management system were its energy-saving capabilities, data collection and flexibility. Applying time controls and sensors ensures optimal energy efficiency. Helvar 329 light sensorsmeasure the amount of daylight and based on this, the light strength in the halls is kept constant.
In order to properly map energy consumption, the luminaires are equipped with DALI-2 drivers. These drivers have a data storage that can be accessed via the Helvar Insights platform can be read out. The burning hours can also be read out. By dimming back the lighting and implementing daylight control, the burning hours are significantly extended, which provides great cost savings and reduces the footprint.

Besides saving energy, flexibility was also an important factor in choosing a Helvar light management system. The system can be adapted at any time and new functionalities can be added at any time. This ensures proper operation for now and in the future.

Tunable White control

The production areas are equipped with Tunable White lighting which we control with a dynamic Light over Time (LoT) cycle. KU Leuven's Light & Lighting Laboratory, together with Groen Licht Vlaanderen and in collaboration with Zumtobel, conducted research into the effect of biodynamic lighting on the well-being of employees. This involved testing three different types of lighting. Standard LED with a fixed light colour, Tunable White lighting and Human Centric Lighting with more than 1,000 lux vertically. The study showed that Human Centric Lighting has a positive effect in a production environment. After analysing the results, Volvo Trucks chose to implement Tunable White in the entire factory wherever possible. With this, the lighting supports the workers' biorhythms.

Volvo has far-reaching ambitions for the future. Rudy Van Leeuwen: "Thanks to the close cooperation between Volvo and various departments within Helvar, we are thinking carefully about developments for the future. We run several pilots where we test new functionalities in practice. Their findings are incorporated into developments and applied within our system."

Volvo Group Real Estate has the DALI Lighting Awards gewon in the Industry category.