Specifier & Rep Education
What you need to know to specify, sell, and install emergency lighting. Written by the Sage team for working specifiers, engineers, and manufacturers' reps.
Compliance
3 articles
What is UL 924?
The standard every emergency lighting product must meet.
NFPA 101 egress illumination requirements
The footcandle rules every emergency lighting layout must satisfy.
The 90-minute rule: why every emergency lighting product uses it
Not a suggestion — a building code.
Specifier
10 articles
Central Battery vs. Unit Equipment: which to spec?
The most common spec decision in commercial emergency lighting.
What is an ELC, and why does Sage have so many?
Emergency Lighting Control modules: the bridge between general lighting and central battery.
How to spec emergency lighting in 6 steps
The workflow most specifiers actually follow.
BB / RE / AC: the three Sage Luminaire mounting variants
Every Sage Luminaire ships in three flavors. Here's how to choose.
Sage Live™: what cloud monitoring actually does
Remote diagnostics for the central battery system.
What is a footcandle?
The unit of measurement that drives emergency lighting design.
Inverters vs. central battery: what's the real difference?
Two flavors of centralized emergency power, one decision for the project.
Emergency lighting for healthcare facilities
Hospitals and clinics have tighter requirements than base NFPA 101. Here's what's different.
Emergency lighting for data centers
Data halls, white space, network operations, and the bridge to generator power.
Self-testing: what NFPA requires and what Sage automates
Monthly functional tests + annual discharge tests — for every emergency fixture in the building.
Engineer
2 articles
Transfer switches in central battery systems
The component that decides — in microseconds — when the emergency system takes over.
IES photometric files explained (and why they matter)
Without an .ies file, your fixture can't be specified.
Rep
4 articles
How Sage's cross-reference tool works
What's behind the search box, and how confident you should be in each match.
How Sage stacks up against Acuity / Lithonia
An honest competitive comparison for reps in conversation with prospects.
How to read a Sage ordering code
The anatomy of a Sage SKU — every character has a meaning.
Buy American Act and federal project compliance
What BAA requires, and why it matters for federal specs.
More articles coming
Sage publishes new articles as the team identifies common questions from specifiers and reps. Have a topic you want covered? Suggest one.