Acuity Brands & Sensity Systems Team Up to Accelerate the Internet of Things

Acuity Brands has announced a strategic partnership with light sensory networks firm, Sensity Systems. Acuity Brands and Sensity intend to develop a joint solution that further accelerates energy-efficient LED lighting into a smart, connected platform for the Internet of Things (IoT).

Their smart lighting solutions will be targeted at city scale projects, commercial and retail buildings, airports and universities. According to MemooriBusiness Intelligence Ltd., the partnership will concentrate on improving energy conservation, public services, safety, security and parking, but also brings additional value through a wide range of innovative applications. Acuity Brands and Sensity have already begun the process of implementing commercial deployments with their initial clients.

The timing of the partnership seems shrewd in terms of market projections but also when considering national initiatives, says Memoori. Both companies have expressed that their combined solution will fit well the goals of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Presidential Challenge for Advanced Outdoor Lighting.The challenge aims to work on a municipal level to upgrade 1.5 million U.S. street lights to high-efficiency LEDs by 2017.

Cutting the energy used by lighting systems by 40% would save $53 billion in the U.S. alone. While annual savings from energy costs across the globe could be 3 to 4 times as much.

Acuity Brands and Sensity are well positioned to be a huge influence on such savings, but can also add considerable value, beyond illumination, through a widespread upgrade of lighting systems. The energy efficiency LED renovation represents the ideal platform to deploy a smart lighting network that will not only deliver important cost, safety, efficiency, energy and carbon pollution reduction benefits, but also transform the lighting quality in cities.

Previous to this announcement, LG Innotek and Daintree Networks announced a partnership to create embedded wireless drivers enabling lighting control of LED fixtures. The innovative technology now allows LED fixture manufacturers to create wireless-enabled LED lighting solutions for their commercial and industrial customers to seamlessly interact with wireless control solutions.

In a company statement Danny Yu, Daintree Networks CEO, said “We have developed partnerships with a number of fixture manufacturers, and we’re excited to enable them to expand their customer offerings by joining forces with LG Innotek to create these embedded drivers. Ultimately it’s about executing on the promise of open standards to deliver increased savings and value to building owners, operators, and occupants.”

While the growth opportunities within lighting remain vast, the lighting controls market will need to gain more traction in the retrofit market, developing the business case for wireless. “If the lighting controls market is to maximize the growth opportunities that we forecast then it must increase its share of the retrofit market.”

Read the full article: http://www.memoori.com/acuity-brands-sensity-systems-team-accelerate-internet-things/. Memoori offers independent market research, business intelligence and advice on smart building technologies to companies across the value chain; supporting them in making essential strategic business decisions. The company focus on smart buildings, video surveillance, access control, LED Lighting, lighting controls, BEMS and smart grid.