Lighting accounts for 12% of global electricity consumption per year.
With environmental sustainability and energy efficiency becoming increasingly important, companies are looking for ways to reduce their lighting-related energy costs. The best option for this is to install smart LED lighting, which allows you to save up to 80% on your energy bill.
Changing existing lighting to smart LED lighting is easy to plan: the project can be carried out perfectly during office hours, without inconveniencing your staff or having to relocate. It is a minimally disruptive intervention, especially when compared to other drastic steps that the energy and climate crises will require, such as insulating buildings better, renewing or modifying HVAC systems, etc.
What is Smart Connected Lighting?
Smart connected lighting, or smart connected lighting, is an integrated lighting system connected to the internet or your local building management system, and equipped with sensors. If connected to the cloud, you can log in from anywhere, which gives companies more in control of their energy consumption ; real-time access to consumption and current lighting levels, and automating tasks such as dimming lights in unoccupied areas or turning off lights when they are not needed.
A new reality for buildings
LED lighting with built-in sensors can make buildings, which account for 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions, much more energy-efficient. Occupancy sensors integrated into a smart lighting system can dim workstations and other spaces when they are not occupied and light them again when there is presence.
This will finally put an end to old-fashioned lighting regimes where lights are either completely on or completely off, often leaving empty rooms unnecessarily (overly bright) lit for a fixed period of time. There is thus more control over the actual electricity consumption of lighting, and you can reduce energy consumption even further through further optimisations.
Moreover, the sensors will also turn off the lights completely at night, to avoid lights remaining on all night when no one is left in the building - something we regularly see in (new) office buildings.
Beyond lighting
Just like in a smart city, smart lighting systems can serve as the foundation on which a smart and efficient ecosystem can be built - as in a smart city. a smart integrated system goes beyond lighting.
Connected is an important key word when we talk about smart connected lighting systems; they use standard network architectures and protocols (such as IP, KNX, BACnet, or API links) and can therefore integrate with other systems in a building, in order to create synergies that add a lot of extra value.
Consider integration with an HVAC system, where a connected lighting system constantly monitors internal and external lighting conditions, automatically opening blinds to provide additional sunlight to the entire building. The heating can now be automatically turned down a lot, or openings opened to let in cooler air and lower the air conditioning.
This connectivity leaves very few limitations in terms of smart integrations, and it opens up additional opportunities to significantly lower energy bills and reduce carbon emissions.
Besides smart integrations, such a lighting system also includes various sensors, which provide valuable data to make business operations more sustainable. Occupancy sensors collect data on usage levels and activities in a lit space. They can use this data to carry out space optimisation analyses: if less space is needed because parts of a floor or even entire floors are underutilised, these spaces can be minimally heated, cooled and lit. When expanding, the company can also use this data to make important decisions on whether or not to rent out or sell these unused spaces to further reduce the operation's physical footprint.
Each of these actions can significantly reduce costs, save energy and reduce emissions!
Short-term benefits, long-term promise
Smart lighting promises to deliver significant long-term benefits, and can improve the reduce global carbon footprint by more than 553 million tonnes a year.
But there are also many short-term benefits. Smart lighting can be installed quickly, on an as-a-service basis requiring no capital investment and minimal disruption. The supplier retains ownership of the lighting hardware and performs all maintenance and upgrades; the customer only has to pay periodic fees and benefit from the savings that begin to pay off immediately.
You can read more about our lighting services here, such as Light as A Service (LaaS) or Light at your Service (LayS).
In addition to classic as-a-service offerings, we are also in the wings a Circular offering (C-LaaS) in preparation, we are ensuring that the total offering fully complies with the circular thinking that is strongly promoted from Europe. More news on this soon.
Savings in energy consumption and costs are immediately realised through the energy efficiency of the LED luminaires themselves. Energy consumption will fall even further as data-driven lighting applications come online, with many additional long-term benefits for space owners, managers and users.
Want to know more about integrating smart connected lighting into your business? LED's talk!
