Value creation by smart and intelligent lighting

An industry analysis on why is it crucial to design well-equipped smart lighting and intelligent controls for a smart environment in smart cities, and its imbedded safety features

The new India is gearing up for smart cities, that are poised to make lives better for its inhabitants. Smart lighting technologies have expanded into smart cities and smart homes, gaining huge momentum in the last few years.

Crucial to design well-equipped smart lighting
Smart lighting can be a backbone for a smart city network. Today, smart lighting products like the LED lighting range can help cities in monitoring the environment, to increase public and traffic safety, besides providing the best energy efficient solutions for improved citizen safety. Today, smart lights are available for different needs such as streetlights, commercial and for homes.

Ranbir Mehra, Director, Jaquar Lighting states, “The opportunities that these cities can seize, with the fitting of smart lighting solutions, extend beyond value creation through energy (cost), the improvement of the environmental impact and maintenance savings.” This is mainly because considering that as much as 40 per cent of a city’s energy budget is consumed by street lighting, and new efficient lighting can save up to 50 per cent of these costs as a result of increased energy efficiency.

When smart lighting gets integrated with the smart home gadgets, a certain level of intelligence needs to be introduced into the system, through the internet of things (IoT) concepts, to result in an intelligent home. Smart lighting, even though, may be a standalone system. Sharmila Kumbhat, Director, K-Lite Industries discusses, “However when integrated into the IoT, the intelligent controls become crucial. Particularly, in a smart environment in smart cities, unless the control is well designed, the result will be chaos with malfunctions and non- coordinated actions.”

Rajesh Naik, Lighting Business Head, Crompton Greaves Consumer Electricals Ltd, shares pointers to design well-equipped smart lighting and intelligent controls for a smart environment in smart cities, such as:

Data

• The smart street lights and poles present in a smart city will fulfil functions more than just a mere illumination.
• Street lighting poles can also be seen as data stations with sensors for the weather, pollution sensing and monitoring as well as adaptive lighting.
• While it provides smart screens for ads, it can also be used to monitor parking spaces, recharge the batteries of an electric car and for public address systems.
• Energy saving, lower costs and reduced maintenance
• Cost effective and energy efficient, they further enable demand-driven lighting, is proactive and faster in terms of maintenance and at the same time dim the lights at off peak traffic hours leading to optimum energy utilization. Moreover, it reduces the carbon footprint further saving energy and reducing municipal electricity costs
• There is an ease of maintenance at remote controlled based operation facilitates while at the same time, real time energy metering and report generation assist in analysing and deciding optimum electricity usage

Safety and security

• One of the most important assets of a well-equipped smart lighting is the reduction of crime and safety of roads through networked street lighting built on a scalable platform. This not only improves pedestrian and bicycle safety but also overall visibility as well
• City managers can further control the amount of light produced from outdoor lighting which can be possible only through a well-connected LED street lighting system. Also one can adjust the kind of light levels to support certain intersections that have an accident history
• Weather also plays crucial role as one has to adapt to both colour and light levels

Convenience

• Lighting infrastructure can be leveraged with allocation of parking spaces, commuting data as well as controlling and managing traffic

Empowering

• Lighting is a force to be reckoned with as it creates an entire umbrella of networks that are not only used by just the lighting sectors but is also a tool to light up businesses and schools thereby creating the future of a digital city

Naik assures, “All in all, what is very critical in smart lighting and intelligent control systems are reliability, inter-operability, scalability and security of the systems designed.”

Safety features imbedded in the lightings
There are many safety features that are embedded and ensured in a good quality lighting fixture. These are very critical and any compromise here has serious repercussions on the safety aspects.

Naik says, “The primary electrical safety features are protection against voltage surges and fluctuations, over voltage and low voltage protections and short and open circuit protections. Beyond this, the product is so designed to ensure ease in installation and maintenance, and is designed for proper heat dissipation.” The material selection for the lightings should be such that they are fire retardant, so that even in cases of any untoward accidents, the light fixtures do not catch or spread fire and are safe for use.

Another important aspect is the photobiological safety aspect of the LEDs being used in the lights and the blue content. These need to be within the safe limits and product needs to comply with the photobiological safety standards. Other aspects which are critical are ensuring that the right amount of light in the right direction is emitted and is safe and comfortable to the user. Glare, ripple and uniformity of the light in the space that is lit up is to be ensured with use of right lighting design techniques and right products with these features as desired for the application under consideration.

With IoT system, for example, a smart city essentially becomes one integrated information system aimed at improving the quality of life. The intelligence sharing is only through the cloud. This means that an increasing amount of personal and corporate information exists in the cloud for interchanges with a host of devices. Kumbhat explains, “This automatically provides a weak link in the security chain and makes the system vulnerable for exploitation and hence cybersecurity implementation issue arises.”

Security of all interfaces, mobile, fixed and cloud, need to be maintained. This may include additional firewalls and network traffic monitoring, as well as access control. With the increase in cybersecurity risks surrounding IoT development, it is advisable for companies to employ professionals to secure networks and devices against unwanted infiltration, says Kumbhat. Cybersecurity personnel need to shift with the innovative new ways hacker’s intent to profit from unmonitored and insecure systems and meet the challenges proactively.

Outdoor lights altogether raise the bar of safety on roads. The lights are weather-proof and corrosion resistant that increases their tenacity. The LED high bays have a die cast aluminium heatsink that allows efficient heat dissipation with aluminium reflector. Even the glaze LED battens have a high quality design with extruded aluminium. Besides, Mehra says that each of the lightings go through a number of safety checks that come with quality output and help in eliminating risks associated with electrical lighting.

The opportunities that smart cities can seize with the fitting of smart lighting solutions extend beyond value creation.
Ranbir Mehra, Director,  Jaquar Lighting

Lighting is a force to be reckoned with as it creates an entire umbrella of networks and acts as a tool to light up the future of a digital city.
Rajesh Naik, Lighting Business Head, Crompton Greaves Consumer Electricals Ltd

In a smart environment, unless the intelligent control is well designed, the result will be chaoswith malfunctions and non- coordinated actions.
Sharmila Kumbhat, Director, K-Lite Industries