Confusion in Street Lighting?

Street lighting represents a growth opportunity for electrical and lighting distributors as well as manufacturers (and yes, some sell direct to municipalities).  And the recent acquisition by Verizon of Sensity, and Acuity’s involvement in Sensity, which ElectricalTrends has commented on, have heightened the awareness of the Smart Cities concept as well as street lighting.  As you’ll see below, it appears that emerging technologies (LED and IoT) are beginning to confuse issues.  Do cities want energy efficiency? Interconnectedness? The ability to “control more”? (which begs the question if their populace wants them to control more) and ???? (a case study on Sensity’s website mentions that Simon Group (mall owners) envision measuring the depth of snow!

Coincidentally our friend Chris Cloutier from D+R International recently attended a conference on street lighting and brings us his observations:

Recently I had a chance to attend the Street and Area Lighting Conference. It was very interesting and thought it might be an interesting topic for us to discuss.

As you know, the US DOE used outdoor area and street lighting as an early technology to test and demonstrate the efficacy of LED technologies. As a result, this technology has seen pretty fast adoption compared to other LED technologies (DOE estimates that in 2014 12.7% of the installations were LED).

Recently, there has been some turmoil in this market. There have been citizens and communities complaining about the light they get from the LED street lights and there was recently a report from the AMA on the effect of the blue light from these lights. I attended this conference to better understand what is happening to this market as a result of these and other factors.

The dominant theme at this conference was using street and area lighting as a technology solution to create Smart Cities. Given the iniquitousness of street lighting, these lights can also provide sensing and monitoring capabilities that can help improve safety and security, not to mention better track outages and weather and traffic conditions. One speaker at the conference even said “We are tired of being green. We need to move beyond green. We need to be seen as an interconnected, interoperable, networkable solution!”

This is a very similar theme to what we discussed when we were talking about commercial lighting control systems! The how lights will become systems, not simply illuminating arrays.

But, the confluence of these issues – the technology elements of the LED lights (including the complexity of identifying the “best” light) and concerns about the light themselves appear to be putting a chill on this market. This was a theme I heard from every manufacturer I talked to (and I talked to every manufacturer that had a booth) and a number of other market actors – including distributors and manufacturer reps.

Based on the discussions I have had and what I am reading, quite simply, local decision-makers are confused. If they are switching to LED’s, how do they know which is the right/best one? If they are switching, should they look at some sort of network? If so, what should that network do? Will the citizens like the light? How will politicians respond to the health concerns.

Your readers may want to consider this confusion an opportunity to help the customers better understand the problems they are trying to solve and providing lighting solutions that meet their need. While Smart Cities hold significant promise, it’s not clear that this is what is, or should, drive LED street lighting replacement. Communities seem interested in lowering their energy costs, their O&M costs and providing security and safety for their citizens.

It sounds like municipalities are faced with some decisions. Distributors need to be aware of the varying technologies and opportunities … and ask their manufacturers if they go direct in this market or work through distributors.  And if it is a manufacturer-driven sale, perhaps “a” key distributor (or multiple) can help market the benefits to the local populace so that public opinion can help you win (having lived in DC I’ve seen how advertising to a small audience (535 people who site in a domed building) can be very influential.)

So, reduce energy or connectedness?  Which is more important?