He says the API also allows data to be cultivated from the network to learn about rooms’ occupancy statuses and their lighting control settings to predict future savings. Trott says lighting control can serve dealers and their clients as a gateway solution into a powerful world of energy conservation that provides convenience on many levels.
“A common misconception is that the IoT enables smart lighting, but it’s the converse. Smart lighting enables IoT,” he says.
“Cree recognizes that building owners, engineers and architects don’t want to stop at lighting. Commercial buildings have a multiplicity of complex systems, such as HVAC, plumbing, smoke and fire, security and safety that must respond to dynamic conditions, and all are candidates for greater efficiency, control and interaction to create cost savings and better experiences for the end user. Cree SmartCast PoE provides the technology to make the lights smart and the platform to deploy the intelligence across commercial buildings.”
Flexibility a Key Component
Integrator friendliness of lighting control products has been a past hurdle for manufacturers to overcome in the commercial electronics industry. Toward that end, market leader Lutron Electronics recently added to its portfolio a product line that enables the commercial market to take advantage of the major retrofit opportunity in existing commercial buildings.
Lutron points out that over half of all commercial buildings were built before 1980, and that many of these properties could benefit from the addition of today’s lighting control systems. In introducing its Vive line, Lutron — which also offers motorized shade products — says its latest commercial solution installs 70 percent faster than wired systems.
Vive utilizes Lutron’s Clear Connect wireless technology that it says allows dealers to install the product quickly and adopt the system to clients’ evolving needs.
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“To a building owner or facility manager, Vive represents a scalable, flexible lighting control solution that easily transforms a building one step at a time or as space needs change, and [it] helps address energy-saving issues. To contractors, Vive represents a reliable, simple, time-saving product that’s versatile enough to control all light sources in any size commercial building,” says Eric Lind, vice president of global specifications, Lutron. “This product addesses the needs of customers on many levels.”
Lind says such solutions help facility managers and building owners efficiently improve the comfort of their buildings.
He emphasizes that lighting and HVAC consume a lot of resources in commercial buildings, and by integrating advanced control capabilities dealers can enhance “a customer’s opportunity to generate and collect data, and to make that data available insuch a way that it adds value and improves the total building environment. Integrated lighting, shade and HVAC controls make it easier to manage electricity use, reduce costs, and improve the user experience.”
Fitting into the IoT landscape, Lind adds that Vive integrates into building management systems via BACnet and other protocols, and as IoT continues to grow the system will complement other usage capabilities such as lights to weather data, plus shade control benefits when clients are ready to embrace these technologies.
Illuminating Possibilities for LEDs
Arguably the highest profile category in the energy conservation product genre, LED lights quickly overtook CFLs as the go-to bulb product in the home and now in the office.
Philips Lighting, a Royal Philips company, and a top manufacturer of LED lighting products announced earlier this year during the Light + Building 2016 event in Frankfurt, Germany, several new lines that address commercial applications.
“We continually seek to improve the lives of our customers. Through our connected lighting systems we strive to provide the best lighting experiences and drive greater energy and cost efficiencies,” says Eric Rondolat, CEO of Philips Lighting.
“And by extending lighting into the Internet of Things we are unlocking even more value for our customers and partners through capabilities and services that go beyond illumination.”
Moving into several vertical markets with its LED and IoT lighting products Philips is actively targeting categories such as “smart cities,” “smart offices” and “smart offices.” Philips says its “smart cities” goals include a partnership with Vodafone that to date numbers more than 500 installations in more than 30 countries.
Philips says the energy savings from operational costs are helping communities to build digital back-bones for smart cities, and its DigiStreet LED street light is a product that is future proof through the inclusion of slots for the placement of sensors and wireless connectivity.
In the retail category, Philips is working with Cisco to improve the comfort, sustainability and productivity of end users. Philips also recently underscored its commitment to retail via a partnership with Aisle411, a provider of digital store mapping, product search and shopper analytics. Through this partnership Philips will deliver a connected indoor lighting positioning system for a U.A.E.-based company in the Middle East.
