Connected Lighting as a Means of Energy Saving

Residential, industrial and commercial lighting sectors accounts for 7% of the total energy consumed in the United States. Further, lighting and heating currently account for approximately 40% of energy consumption within industrial buildings. It’s also one of the main reasons manufacturers within consumer and industrial markets are turning to connected lighting as a means of energy saving. If there is one area within the IoT that has the greatest potential for impact, it is connected lighting. As energy costs and concerns about environmental impact continue to rise, finding ways to apply technology and innovation to optimize lighting functionalities and reduce its power demands are becoming more important. Lighting also acts as a foundational network for smart sensors, allowing industrial manufacturers to collect and store insights about the building’s environment (temperature, humidity levels, occupancy, etc.).

While the implementation of LED light bulbs alone provides significant improvements in energy efficiency, connected or smart lighting also allows for further optimizations through automation and user control. One example is automatically adjusting lighting conditions during specific times of the day. This, coupled with a rise of new lighting services and features, have helped connected lighting become the area of highest potential growth within the smart homes and buildings segments.

Enhanced Levels of Control

While efficiency (and therefore cost management) is the primary driver for most connected lighting control, there are a number of other aspects that come into play when developing lighting applications within residential and industrial markets. Modularity is important, allowing lighting systems to be extended and segmented while the ability to control lighting with mobile devices permits sophisticated interfaces to be deployed without the expense of a dedicated screen. With the enhanced levels of control available, new applications for lighting including uses in areas such as medical therapy and agriculture are emerging.

Basic lighting control starts with the ability to turn lighting on and off and extends to dimming and color control of LEDs. More complex systems support the full automation of lighting, energy management, intensity control and sensing and downlink connectivity.

Smart Home and Building Market

Connectivity is a key technology for controlled lighting systems, although there are multiple aspects of connectivity in this context. There is the connectivity between the lighting and the building management system (BMS) that provides the overall control, connectivity between the elements of the system and the connectivity used during the setup and commissioning of the system. Once the connectivity element has been implemented, a developer can add various sensors (temperature, moisture, lighting levels). These local or cloud-based sensors add tremendous value to industrial applications as they can be used to report information to maintain or optimize systems.

The total smart home and building market will be worth about $200 billion USD by 2024. In addition to improving convenience, a key goal of these technologies is saving energy, which is driving rapid adoption of solid-state and connected lighting, occupancy monitoring and addition of sensors for predictive maintenance. ON Semiconductor is proud to provide solutions, sensors, connectivity options and platforms that aid in the advancements within this industry, shaping a more cost and energy efficient future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bruno Damien
Managing Director, IoT, ON Semiconductor