Smart Lighting
Towards smart lighting – indoor, outdoor and street lighting
If the best alternatives available today were applied to lighting, an energy saving of 30% could be envisioned. Solid-state light sources, i.e. light-emitting diodes (LED) and organic light emitting diodes (OLED), may in the future outperform almost all other light sources in terms of efficiency and thus provide a saving potential of about 50% of the electrical energy for lighting. If the advanced LED technology is combined with intelligent light management system, which will control the light output according to ambient lighting conditions or people's presence, another 20% can be saved – in sum 70%. Thus an additional saving potential of 40% will be provided by intelligent solid-state lighting solutions. By realising those solutions, huge benefits can be achieved:
- From an environmental perspective more than 1000 Mt of carbon dioxide can be saved per year on a global level
- The economy will be boosted by increasing Europe's industrial position in lamp, luminaire and driving electronics, jointly employing 150,000 people today
- Each year more than 300 billion euro can be saved on the global energy bill
- Society at large will profit from more visual comfort by superior light solutions and from less light pollution
- Energy efficient light technologies will provide significant individual savings
However, the high performance technology is not available yet to its full extent and slow market adaptation and acceptance limit the realisation of these intelligent LED solutions. ICT plays a key role in the future smart lighting. The vision of providing everyone with exactly the light they need will soon become reality.
In the future, it will be possible for all offices and homes to enjoy lighting that adjusts automatically to the time of day and the season of the year. When the sun is shining and lots of light is flooding in, daylight sensors will dim the artificial lighting or switch it off completely. Occupancy sensors will do the same when office workers leave their desks for a few minutes. This can save as much as 30 percent in electricity costs. In the more distant future, technology will even allow us to customize the light over each and every workplace – after all, there is no one lighting scenario that is right for everyone.
REViSITE will provide profound added value to existing national and international initiatives such as Photonics 21 European Technology Platform by complementing the work undertaken within its WG1 (Information and communication) to apply the full potential of ICT4EE in smart lighting, learning from the other target sectors and exploring interoperability issues particularly with the smart grids and smart buildings sectors.
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