Rising global temperature is taking a toll on environment and climate. In this context, the focus is on the reduction of CO2 emissions and greater efficiency. It paves the way for energy efficient and climate protective intelligent solution for the infrastructure and buildings. Against this backdrop, the global LED lighting industry is expected to grow tremendously, over the long-term. Starting with the first incandescent lamp which was invented by Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan in the 19th century. Since then there has been noteworthy advancement in different types of bulbs and their efficiencies. Major kinds of lamps or bulbs can be found in different lighting systems like homes, offices, factories, electrical devices etc.
The lighting market in India has been witnessing tectonic shift from using conventional products to LEDs. The government’s focus on energy efficiency measures, growing consumer awareness about energy-efficient products, smart cities project and innovative products offered by the industry that are in sync with the overall trend of digitization. That has pushed the growth of the industry over the years. Ultimately, it will also see the rise of prototype designers, electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
“From past few years, LED lights have surfaced as an influential source for lighting. Even though at a nascent stage, LED lights have rapidly gained prominence in the Indian lighting market. Owing to several advantages over conventional lighting technology, LED lights are set for growth over the next few decades,” observes Rajesh Uttamchandani, Director, SYSKA Group. According to a report by TechSci (a global research based consulting firm), the LED lighting market in India is projected to register a CAGR of over 30 per cent during 2016-2021. The Electric Lamp and Component Manufacturers Association of India (ELCOMA) shares that the LED market in India is expected to grow to ` 216 billion by 2020. This leap will result in the LED market accounting for about 60 per cent of India’s total lighting industry (approximately ` 376 billion) in 2020.
Government Role
According to PIB report, by 2019, 770 million LED bulbs and 35 million LED streetlights will be deployed to replace conventional lights. Under the Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY), 27.3 million LED bulbs have to be distributed to BPL households. Over 2.1 million conventional streetlights have already been replaced with LED streetlights across the country, under the Street Lighting National Programme (SLNP).
Emerging Technology Trends
Recently I had the opportunity to vist HKTDC Spring 2018 International Lighting Show, Hong Kong and we were also invited to cover Light+Building 2018, Frankfurt.These events emphasised the focus on Smart Lighting, Connected Lighting, IoT and Lighting Outlook. While talking about innovations, Biswajit Sengupta, Lighting Consultanat, says, “There are a lot of technological innovations taking place globally like development of light engines which can be retrofitted in HID street light luminaires, heat sinks to increase the reliability and lifetime of LED, drivers, and optic for more efficient lighting. Besides the above there are developments in the field of OLED and LiFi.” Following are the emerging lighting technology trends:
Smart Lighting
Apart from energy savings, LED lighting is enhancing the overall lighting experience with respect to control, monitoring or sensing and connectivity coupled with the convenience of longer life and improved aesthetics.
For instance, in India, to curb the energy wastage, a team of students from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) has developed an intelligent lighting system that ensures the street-lights illuminate 100 percent brighter once the sensors on the lighting system detects vehicular movement. Otherwise the lights go dim by 30 percent. It is the first kind of smart technology being implemented for street lighting in the country.
It is a fully automated lighting system. i-lighting is an integrated system with a control module, sensor module and LED driver. The control module is the brain of the system. It contains a microcontroller unit (MCU), which is responsible for synchronising the different modules and performing some basic computations. The control module also allows street-lights to exchange data between each other and with the cloud.
Tuya Smart made its appearance in the Light+Building in Frankfurt, Germany. At Light+Building, a leading trade fair of the industry, there were over 2,600 exhibitors and more than 210,000 visitors coming from outside Germany. Light + Building represents the world’s largest stage for the lighting market. Tuya Smart is a global intelligent platform that provides an array of smart lighting solutions for traditional lighting companies. The smart lighting products enabled by Tuya and displayed at the fair in Frankfurt include smart light whose brightness, color and temperature are adjustable, and Bluetooth mesh light matrix on which consumers can play the snake game. The three features of smart lighting, namely voice control, automation and scenario selection are also presented. The smart lighting solution for Tuya can use a variety of networking modes, including WiFi, bluetooth, bluetooth mesh, ZigBee, and so on.
For example, the facial recognition function enabled by Tuya for AI camera allows users to turn on the light with their faces, directly control the speaker on the table, and adjust the color and brightness of the smart light in the room at will. When the user is out of the monitoring scope of the camera for a long time, the camera will identify that the house owner has left, and the light will get dimmer, and finally turned off. This is called mood lighting that has applications in aviation industry and call centres.
Apart from being able to understand instructions, smart lights can also interact with other intelligent devices. In the era of intelligence, lights can do more than lighting. At night, they can help people fall asleep by getting dimmer, while in the morning, they can wake people up by getting brighter. Thanks to the Bluetooth mesh technology, the color and brightness of any of the light in the matrix can be changed as you like.
Advantages of Smart Lighting
• Identify faults with street lighting without need of physical inspection.
• Maintain high performance of street lighting.
• Reduce man-power resources and travelling time as routine inspections or maintenance can be reduced.
• On the top of 30 percent power saving in our LED street lighting
• Lighting level of LED road lights could be further dimmed down remotely to suit actual need. Savings in energy consumptions by further 20 percent
While taking a note of IoT in lighting industry, Rajesh Uttamchandani, Director, SYSKA Group, informs, “The advent of high-efficiency LED lighting and the opportunity for wide-scale adoption of connected lighting in cities and businesses complements the dramatic growth in interest in smart sensors, smart buildings and big data technologies. The underlying challenge is how lighting infrastructure, which may have an expected operational lifetime of 15-25+ years, can be adopted in a way that enables current and future smart city concepts and IoT innovations to be connected and linked. With the rapid development of mobile communications, R&D in sensors, citizen connectivity and services, and ‘big data’ city initiatives there is a clear recognized need for coordinated city and corporate connectivity. New platforms and protocols will not only need to provide security, but will need to deliver flexibility, adaptability and scalability.”
Bluetooth Lighting
The arrival of Bluetooth mesh, a completely new technology, will change the landscape of lighting IT network. Industry experts claim that Bluetooth mesh will eliminate the need for the traditional lighting control box. The technology has applications in smart buildings, large buildings, and university campuses. It is a promising technology that enables the luminaires in buildings into a connected grid. In this, hundreds of devices, such as lights, switches and sensors are able to communicate with each other over the long distances. It’s a mesh topology, so the enabled luminaires don’t need to be in direct radio range as messages are relayed from device to device at the speed of sound.
This new technology will generate new opportunities for lighting manufacturers at a time of increased commoditisation and new functionality, insights and services for building owners. Industry experts believe that with technology the lighting will become a platform to run applications. The lights could track people and objects and lead to applications in dynamic, personalised lighting and asset tracking.
Human Centric Lighting (HCL)
Lighting technologies continue to bring a sea change in our lives, including greater freedom and flexibility in how lighting is applied and controlled in the workplace. The research is going on the impact of lighting on human beings, with resonance its effect upon emotions, well being and productivity as humans spend most of their time awake indoors. These are apt places to implement Human Centric Lighting (HCL) Solutions.
HCL can improve the workplace experience by thinking about building design in an entirely new way. Workplace lighting can, in addition to providing sufficient light to conduct work-related visual tasks, affect employees’ alertness, mood, cognition, sleep-wake pattern and health. The objective of HCL is not only to maximize the value of LED lighting but also adjusting the intensity of the light and colour quality – correlated color temperature (CCT) and color rendering. LED-based HCL is controllable and tunable across a spectrum of CCTs to evoke particular human biological responses and behavior in well-designed indoor environments. For HCL into a building, one requires to install both tunable fixtures and smart lighting controls to drive intensity and CCT.
Horticulture Lighting
Horticulture lighting is gaining momentum, taking the lighting industry one step further. It has brought revolutions in the future of farming with technologies and innovations enabling year-round sustainable fruit, vegetable and flower cultivation. Thanks to the unique properties of LED lighting and major advances in our understanding of plants, we now have exciting possibilities to tune the light to boost yield, customise the plant characteristics and maintain plant health. It stimulates the plants growth in controlled environment.
Future Trends
According to Syska’s Uttamchandani, following are the trends to watch in for 2018:
Connectivity: With LEDs comprehensively in the mainstream, the next frontier in lighting is controls. IoT lights: Lighting is an ideal network for internet of things services to be built on – because it is already there in the ceiling of every building, looking down at us, wired up and ready to go. With Alexa and Google Assistant changing the way we perform our daily chores, LED has also now hit the road, from Lifi to Wifi connected bulbs, you name it and you will have everything performed just at one touch.
Built in light sources: Because LED light sources don’t have to be replaced very often, and no standards have emerged for what they should be like, manufacturers have got used to building them into fittings, rather than designing new luminaries around replaceable ‘lamps’.
New Power Technologies: Until now, LED luminaires have typically come with a ‘driver’ that converts the mains electricity supply into a form the light can use. But now new power technologies are appearing, with a range of benefits. Drivers are often the first component of a lighting system to fail. The latest innovation is power-over-Ethernet, which provides electricity through data cables.
Healthier lighting: Light influences how productive we are at work, how well we learn and how quickly we recover from illness.
While taking a note of Indian Lighting industry taking a cue from the global lighting industry, Sengupta hopes, “The future of all lighting solutions point towards LED, which, in very short span has made remarkable progress. And with emphasis on renewable energy like solar energy, concentration is more on LED lighting as because of its low power compared to conventional lights it is more compatible with solar cells.”
If you want to share thoughts or feedback then please leave a comment below.
