Motion Sensor

What is the best type of lighting timer or motion sensor for commercial buildings?

I'm looking into writing grants so my university can install lighting timers and/or motion sensors to become more efficient.

There are all these names such as time delay relay, and power on, power off, and I'm not sure which one I need. My priority is getting them for the school bookstore, which is very large but has set hours and won't need to be changed often. They may also need to overrule it at times if it's out of whack.

What type/brand would be best?

Thanks!

I'm not sure what timers you have been looking at, but wall timers from Home Depot will not suffice. The lights in the bookstore are on many circuits... a single breaker or switch couldn't handle all of them. You will probably need a system with relays. Relays allows a single central timer to tell many different circuits to turn on or off. There are many companies that make systems like this, but the two that come to mind for me are Lutron and Leviton. The central control panels in those systems can also accommodate photocells (to dim the lights when the sun is shining in windows) and motion sensors (to turn lights on for the janitor after hours, etc). Unfortunately, commercial components like these are not really available for sale to consumers online... you will have to contact a distributor. And don't forget to factor in the labor for electricians to install a system like this.

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