Smart lighting

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_lighting

Smart lighting is a lighting technology designed for energy efficiency. This may include high efficiency fixtures and automated controls that make adjustments based on conditions such as occupancy or daylight availability. Lighting is the deliberate application of light to achieve some aesthetic or practical effect. It includes task lighting, accent lighting, and general lighting.

Energy consumption

19% of energy use in the world is used for lighting, and 6% of greenhouse emissions in the world derive from this energy used for lighting. In the United States, 65 percent of energy consumption is used by commercial and industrial sectors, and 22 percent of this is used for lighting. 

Minimizing energy usage

Smart lighting is the good way which enables to minimize and save light by allowing the householder to control remotely cooling and heating, lighting, and the control of appliances. This ability saves energy and provides a level of comfort and convenience. From outside the traditional lighting industry, the future success of lighting will require involvement of a number of stakeholders and stakeholder communities. The concept of smart lighting also involves utilizing natural light from the sun to reduce the use of man-made lighting, and the simple concept of people turning off lighting when they leave a room.

Major techniques

Smart lighting control

The use of automatic light dimming is an aspect of smart lighting that serves to reduce energy consumption. Manual light dimming also has the same effect of reducing energy use. 

Use of sensors

In the paper "Energy savings due to occupancy sensors and personal controls: a pilot field study", Galasiu, A.D. and Newsham, G.R have confirmed that automatic lighting systems including occupancy sensors and individual (personal) controls are suitable for open-plan office environments and can save a significant amount of energy (about 32%) when compared to a conventional lighting system, even when the installed lighting power density of the automatic lighting system is ~50% higher than that of the conventional system.

Components

A complete sensor consists of a motion detector, an electronic control unit, and a controllable switch/relay. The detector senses motion and determines whether there are occupants in the space. It also has a timer that signals the electronic control unit after a set period of inactivity. The control unit uses this signal to activate the switch/relay to turn equipment on or off. For lighting applications, there are three main sensor types: passive infrared, ultrasonic, and hybrid. 

Daylight sensing

In response to daylighting technology, daylight-linked automated response systems have been developed to further reduce energy consumption. These technologies are helpful, but they do have their downfalls. Many times, rapid and frequent switching of the lights on and off can occur, particularly during unstable weather conditions or when daylight levels are changing around the switching illuminance. Not only does this disturb occupants, it can also reduce lamp life. A variation of this technology is the 'differential switching' or 'dead-band' photoelectric control which has multiple illuminances it switches from to reduce occupants being disturbed.

Occupancy sensing

Smart lighting that utilizes occupancy sensors can work in unison with other lighting connected to the same network to adjust lighting per various conditions. The table below shows potential electricity savings from using occupancy sensors to control lighting in various types of spaces.

Ultrasonic

The advantages of ultrasonic devices are that they are sensitive to all types of motion and generally there are zero coverage gaps, since they can detect movements not within the line of sight.

Others

Motion-detecting (microwave), heating-sensing (infrared), and sound-sensing; optical cameras, infrared motion, optical trip wires, door contact sensors, thermal cameras, micro radars,daylight sensors.

Smart-lighting emergency ballast for fluorescent lamps

The function of a traditional emergency lighting system is the supply of a minimum illuminating level when a line voltage failure appears. Therefore, they have to store energy in a battery module to supply the lamps in that case of failure. In this kind of lighting systems the internal damages for example battery overcharging, damaged lamps and starting circuit failure must be detected and repaired by specialist workers. 

For this reason, the smart lighting prototype can check its functional state every fourteen days and dump the result into a LED display. With these features they can test themselves checking their functional state and displaying their internal damages. Also the maintenance cost can be decreased. 

Overview

The main idea is the substitution of the simple line voltage sensing block that appears in the traditional systems by a more complex one based on a microcontroller. This new circuit will assume the functions of line voltage sensing and inverter activation, by one side, and the supervision of all the system: lamp and battery state, battery charging, external communications, correct operation of the power stage, etc., by the other side. 

The system has a great flexibility, for instance, it would be possible the communication of several devices with a master computer, which would know the state of each device all the time. 

A new emergency lighting system based on an intelligent module has been developed. The micro-controller as a control and supervision device guarantees increase in the installation security and a maintenance cost saving. 

Another important advantage is the cost saving for mass production specially whether a microcontroller with the program in ROM memory is used. 

Smart lighting ecosystem

Smart lighting systems can be controlled using the internet to adjust lighting brightness and schedules. One approach involves creating a smart lighting network that assigns IP addresses to light bulbs, though users also have the option of integrating smart light bulbs into Zigbee or Bluetooth Low Energy mesh networks.

Information transmitting with smart light

Schubert predicts that revolutionary lighting systems will provide an entirely new means of sensing and broadcasting information. By blinking far too rapidly for any human to notice, the light will pick up data from sensors and carry it from room to room, reporting such information as the location of every person within a high-security building. A major focus of the Future Chips Constellation is smart lighting, a revolutionary new field in photonics based on efficient light sources that are fully tunable in terms of such factors as spectral content, emission pattern, polarization, color temperature, and intensity. Schubert, who leads the group, says smart lighting will not only offer better, more efficient illumination; it will provide “totally new functionalities.” 

Advances in photonics

The advances achieved in photonics are already transforming society just as electronics revolutionized the world in recent decades and it will continue to contribute more in the future. From the statistics, North America’s optoelectronics market grew to more than $20 billion in 2003. The LED (light-emitting diode) market is expected to reach $5 billion in 2007, and the solid-state lighting market is predicted to be $50 billion in 15–20 years, as stated by E. Fred Schubert, Wellfleet Senior Distinguished Professor of the Future Chips Constellation at Rensselaer.

Inventors

• Alexander Nikolayevich Lodygin – carbon-rod filament incandescent lamp (1874)
• Joseph Swan – carbonized-thread filament incandescent lamp (1878)
• Thomas Edison – long-lasting incandescent lamp with high-resistance filament (1880)
• John Richardson Wigham – electric lighthouse illumination (1885)
• Nick Holonyak – light-emitting diode (1962)
• Howard Borden, Gerald Pighini, Mohamed Atalla, Monsanto – LED lamp (1968)
• Shuji Nakamura, Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano – blue LED (1992)