Ron Sege, our Chairman and CEO, was interviewed recently by Randy Reid, editor and founder of the Edison Report. Randy and Ron sat down at the Light + Building conference in Frankfurt, Germany and talked about Echelon, our recent streetlight deployment in Cambridge and the future of lighting controls. Below find a sneak peek of the Q&A. If you want to read the entire questions & answers, click here.
Randy: We saw a press release about a large job in Cambridge.
Ron: Cambridge, MA deployed about 5,500 lights, which was a combination of cobraheads for street lighting as well as many decorative luminaires. We created one system with multiple controllable zones. In addition to turning on and off, we dim the luminaires for additional savings. The city retrofitted their existing luminaires with LED and deployed Echelon using a combination of wireless and power line carrier communications. We used wireless on the cobraheads and PLC on the decorative, as our system supports both. This way no one has to drill holes in the decorative fixtures and add antennas.
Randy: If a customer typically saves 50% with LED, how much additional can they save with controls?
Ron: Typically Echelon will save about an additional 35%. In Cambridge, when the lights turn on at sunset, they start out at about 50% and then the intensity changes at various times during the night based on whether it is a residential area or industrial area. Also, as the LED output degrades over time, which they do, the city turns the lights up to maintain a constant light level.
Randy: What are your LIGHTFAIR plans in San Diego?
Ron: We are very excited about LIGHTFAIR and we will be exhibiting our Cambridge applications where cobraheads and decorative will be together. We want to show that Echelon allows customers to really connect anything to anything.