Spotlight is the largest chain of haberdashery, fabric and craft stores in Australia. Over their 32 year history, Spotlight has opened 100 new stores throughout Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. In early October 2004, Spotlight decided to upgrade their Bayswater store located in Melbourne‘s eastern suburbs. Recognising an excellent opportunity, Spotlight snapped up a former “Bunnings Warehouse” hardware store located just 200 metres down the road. After a total refurbishment, Spotlight Bayswater became the largest Spotlight in the world. The Spotlight Mega Store.

The lighting system supplied by Balanced Technology’s Victorian distributor Lightmoves in the Spotlight Mega Store was a combination of two types of lighting. Florescent lighting was used above the display floor, whilst HID Highbay lighting was used for the warehouse and store rooms. As most lighting and electrical industry professionals are aware, both of these lighting systems produce large in rush currents. It was important for Enerlec, the electrical contractor, to choose a product that was able to stagger the load start up without the use of a time clock.

Ensuring the load balance throughout the switchboards was not compromised, the DDRC1210FR provided the contractor with 12 channels of 10 amp control. Each channel is individually staggered by fade time and differing channel switching values in each of the DDRC1210FR relay controllers.

How does this work? The fade time is the time it takes for the dimming value to go from value a to value b. In the case of switching, from 0% to 100%. The switching value is the value at which each channel will respond, some at 5%, some at 10%, some at 15%, etc. As a result it is possible to program the switching values in each relay controller to be exactly the same for each controller and alter the fade rate for each preset or button press. This eliminates any inrush current concerns as all the lights will never turn on at the exact same time.

The lighting control system assigned the store with five preset lighting levels. These were accessible from any of the three store based panels and included presets for trading, stocking, craft, all on and all off modes. Localised panels allowed control of local areas whilst zone panels allowed zone control for craft and sewing areas.