Internet of Lights Blog

Part 2 with Jesse Foote of Navigant Research: Challenges and Future Promise of Networked Lighting Control

In part 2 of our discussion with Jesse Foote, Senior Research Analyst for the market research firm Navigant Research, we talk about some challenges facing lighting control as well as the future of networked lighting. In part 1, we discussed the lighting industry and its intersections with the Internet of Things (IoT).

Wendy Toth:  What are some of the concerns people have related to lighting control and the IoT or Industrial IoT (IIoT)? 

Jesse Foote:  Cyber security arises as an issue as more people become aware of the capabilities of network control systems. Privacy concerns in general are on people’s minds right now, with all the recent NSA revelations. The lighting controls industry will need to ensure that adequate protections are built into their systems from the outset, then make sure that people know that the lighting industry is addressing these issues. People need to believe that systems are secure, so that cyber security and privacy concerns don’t derail the broader adoption of lighting controls.

TOTH:  Who has the responsibility of calming those security and privacy concerns?

FOOTE:  I’m not sure there’s a good answer to that question, not yet. Certainly the vendors of lighting controls need to make sure that security is built into their systems. Whether vendors build it in themselves or team up with partners, and whether standards will be put in place, I hope so. But I think it’s still an open question. 

Maybe another open question is how it gets communicated to the public, and who is responsible for that. Will vendors take the lead in making sure public concerns are addressed, or will it be the ones deploying lighting control systems — the big companies, cities, and municipalities — that really have to prove to their end customers and residents that the systems are not going to be abused?

TOTH:  You mentioned cities. What are some of the demands and constraints that they have when it comes to networked lighting controls?

FOOTE:  If we’re talking about cities, we’re talking primarily about street lighting. LED street lighting has been more widely deployed than control networks for street lighting.

Part of the reason is that control features add to the cost of lighting systems, and some cities are looking for the cheapest possible LED luminaires. It’s hard for them to justify adding things like dimming, which cost extra. But the cost difference is coming down, and it’s my understanding that more lighting manufacturers are including dimming capabilities into their luminaires.

Another challenge holding back the adoption of network controls by cities is the problem of outdated municipal codes. A big benefit of networked lighting control is the ability to dim and shut lights off when they’re not needed or when they don’t have to be at full brightness. But municipal codes haven’t really caught up with that concept, so you run into liability issues, or at least the concern about liability, if there’s a potential safety issue in not providing adequate light to streets. I think the safety issue can be addressed with smart lighting control systems, but the codes need to catch up so that city managers are comfortable adopting those systems.

TOTH:  On a related topic, what’s happening with standards for lighting control?

FOOTE:  The lack of relevant standards is another thing slowing adoption of lighting controls by cities. One big recent development was approval of the NEMA (National Electrical Manufacturing Association) socket standard, which allows a plug-and-play photocell to be put on top of an existing luminaire. This enables not only control over whether that light turns on and off, but also control of the dimming state. Dimming is a key feature of networked intelligent control in street lighting systems.

With the NEMA standard, even if a city doesn’t buy a control system right off the bat, it’s relatively easy to add those controls later. I think that’s a potential big benefit and boost to adoption of controls for street lighting over time.

TOTH:  What about the question of whether cities should use wired or wireless connectivity for networked street lights?

FOOTE:  For street lighting, the norm has been to use wireless in the U.S. and U.K. and wired in the rest of Europe and most of Asia. That’s largely because of the way substations are set up in the different geographical areas.

I think the developments Echelon has announced to control systems that can use both wired and wireless connectivity should help quite a bit. You can use whichever wired/wireless combination makes sense for an individual system, and you get the best of both.

TOTH:  Do you have a vision for where you think networked lighting controls and the IoT are headed in the future?

FOOTE:  There’s a growing expectation that you ought to be able to see the status of things on the Internet and be able to control them remotely. That ability is happening in more areas of our lives, so the thought is, why shouldn’t we be able to check whether lights are on, or turn them on and off remotely? On a personal level, why shouldn’t I be able to pull up an app on my phone and control the lights in my house? The growing expectation that this capability will extend to more and more devices will actually cause it, in part, to come true.

Another piece of the future will be open platforms, so that various parties can find creative new uses for the information collected by the lighting networks. It’s similar to how third-party app developers write software for smartphones. Open platforms that allow third-party software developers to come up with new uses for the information gathered by outdoor or indoor lighting networks will really expand the possible uses for that information.

IIoT Talks is a conversation between industry luminaries and Echelon Corporation about the opportunities of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) market. Echelon's Chief Marketing Officer, Wendy Toth, will share highlights of these conversations via the company blog. If you are interested in participating, please send an email to [email protected]. 

Echelon Brightens its U.S. Outdoor Lighting Prospects by Acquiring Lumewave

Echelon’s control networking solutions for streetlights and other outdoor lighting are popular in cities throughout Europe, Asia, and South America. That’s because these regions of the world prefer the wired power line (PL) communications protocol, which has historically been the basis for Echelon’s products.

But in North America, wireless radio frequency (RF) has dominated. Now, Echelon has brightened its North American prospects through the acquisition of Lumewave, an established wireless outdoor lighting control system provider. 

 Adding Lumewave’s RF products and U.S. sales channels to its own PL products and worldwide channels, Echelon is now ready to become a major player closer to home, as well as in more distant lands.

Lumewave’s Wireless Control Module won Product of the Year in the Lighting Control category from Electrical Construction & Maintenance magazine in 2013.

Outdoor lighting controls are a big part of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), which Echelon is now focusing on exclusively. The combination of Echelon’s and Lumewave’s products will provide cities, municipalities, and enterprises with tremendous flexibility in how they control their outdoor lighting. And it will mean that more customers can take advantage of Echelon’s open, interoperable control networking solutions, no matter where they’re located or what kind of protocols they have in place.

You might also like:

• Echelon’s website
• Echelon’s smart street lighting white paper
• Lumewave’s product lines
• Electrical Construction & Maintenance magazine’s 2013 Product of the Year Category Winners

Part 1 with Jesse Foote of Navigant Research: Intelligent Lighting and the Internet of Things

In part 1 of our discussion with Jesse Foote, Senior Research Analyst for the market research firm Navigant Research, we talk about the lighting industry and its intersections with the Internet of Things (IoT). In part 2, we’ll cover some challenges facing lighting control as well as the future of networked lighting. 

Jesse Foote, Senior Research Analyst, Navigant Research

Wendy Toth:  What’s your perspective on the IoT?

Jesse Foote:  Everybody seems to have a different viewpoint on the IoT. In my market research, I focus on efficient lighting and lighting controls, so I come at the IoT from the lighting side of things. I’m looking at the range of possibilities of other devices that can be networked together once you have a networked lighting control system in place. 

As for the IoT in general, it seems a lot of people are getting burned out on that term. I think that’s mainly because for many years there have been predictions and speculation about an explosion in the number of devices connected to the Internet, as well as talk about how everything in our lives will become interconnected and smart.

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is a hotter topic now than the rest of the IoT. People see the IIoT as more concrete and happening in ways that are directly relevant to everyday life.

TOTH:  There’s a lot of talk about lighting systems being ‘next generation.’ How do you define a next-generation lighting system?

FOOTE:  For a while, we used the term ‘intelligent’ — but you run into a problem of definition. What is an intelligent lighting control system versus one that’s not intelligent? The dividing line I tend to use is simply networked capability. Can the light be seen and controlled via the network? That definition avoids the problems of determining whether the intelligence should be built directly into each light fixture or if more of the intelligence should reside on the network.

Once you cross the threshold of lights (or other devices) that can be seen on the network, and that a manager can control via the network, you open the range of possibilities that fall under the IoT category.

TOTH:  So do you see the IoT being installed almost as an incidental side effect of deploying a networked lighting system?

FOOTE:  Absolutely. Lighting controls are helping to break ground for that broader range of IoT applications, especially in conjunction with upgrades to LED lighting. In those cases, the marginal costs to also add controls is fairly low. Then once you have controls, why not do other things with them?

TOTH:  For this trend, are you talking about indoor lighting or outdoor lighting, or both?

FOOTE:  With outdoor lighting, whether it’s public street lighting or commercial parking lots, people are already making the connection that once you have a network of controlled lights, there are many more things you can do with them.

For indoor lighting in commercial buildings, that awareness is dawning a little more slowly. In large buildings, HVAC systems have been centrally managed for a while; that happened earlier than centrally managed lighting control systems.

At the moment, there’s a bigger range of exciting add-on features with outdoor lighting than indoor lighting. The growth from networked lighting control to networking other devices in an IoT scenario is happening faster with outdoor lighting.

TOTH:  Why do you think there’s less appeal to extending indoor lighting networks to IoT types of applications?

FOOTE:  Integration with existing systems is part of the problem. I ask lighting control companies all the time if their systems can interact directly with a broader building management system (BMS). They always say yes — or, yes, we could write the code to do that interaction. But when I ask them if customers are actually interconnecting those systems, the answer is that almost nobody is.

Right now, the norm is to have two separate control systems in buildings: one primarily for HVAC and a separate one for lighting. It seems logical that those two will eventually come together, but the fact is that right now they are separate.

TOTH:  What would entice building owners or managers to integrate those networked systems?

FOOTE:  One would be the argument that in terms of costs, it doesn’t make sense to have two networks and two sets of sensors. I’ve seen buildings where there are two separate occupancy sensors literally sitting side by side, one to inform the lights and one to inform the HVAC system. That’s an obvious overlap that is wasting equipment expense, plus the time for installing and managing it.

You might think that the cost argument would be enough to push the integration issue, but there also has to be an easy option for building managers to control both systems. At the moment, it’s easier for them to look at two separate control panels than to try to hack the two systems together into one.

To have the incentive to combine those separate systems, they’d need to be enticed with additional features and ease of use and management. One thing that might accelerate it is an enterprise-level solution that allows building managers to look at multiple buildings at the same time. I think as more people adopt that sort of strategy, the benefit of tying the HVAC, lighting, and other systems together within individual buildings will become more compelling.

IIoT Talks is a conversation between industry luminaries and Echelon Corporation about the opportunities of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) market. Echelon's Chief Marketing Officer, Wendy Toth, will share highlights of these conversations via the company blog. If you are interested in participating, please send an email to [email protected].