Wendell D. Strong, GENISYS PoE Lighting Manager, Innovative Lighting
A New Dawn of Lighting Technology [Part 2]
In the first installment of this 3 part series, we walked through a brief review of commercial lighting history starting with open flame sources which carried the lighting banner until just over 100 years ago.
We ended with why SSL, or Solid State Lighting. This was the first true technology that was capable of creating a new dawn of lighting. This is because it had a natural ‘want to be controlled’ as a solid state DC low voltage light source.
My father used to say it didn’t matter how efficient your car was if you left it running in the driveway— and so it is with lighting. Originally, our quest was solely lumens per watt, which was great, but we tended to not apply much control as we were already gaining more efficiency. When controls were applied, they were costly, cumbersome, and often confusing to the end user. As a result, they didn’t always perform as desired. We seemingly “lost control” while trying to gain it.
This was the result of approaching control as “add on feature” as opposed to control being innately part of the lighting system technology to begin with. This is why truly intelligent lighting control has never really existed before.
There is a very simple truth at the heart of this. We are treating LED technology the same as every other lighting technology to date when it is very different. And missing that difference is missing everything it can become.
The LEDs themselves don’t want or need A/C power. Power-over-Ethernet provides the DC low voltage power that the LEDs crave. All delivered via a simple everyday Ethernet cable which provides not only their power, but control as well through that very same cable. One wire both powers and controls the lighting. This is a game changer in every sense of the phrase.
This means we no longer require the traditional electrical infrastructure or even the lighting circuits altogether. They prevent intelligent control, and are quite frankly obsolete in a networked lighting world.
PoE Lighting Technology is fully networked lighting at a DNA level. Not only is every energy lighting control function built in with a 1% incremental granularity, everything is individually addressable. This is where the statements of “up to 90% energy savings compared to traditional lighting” come from when multiple control strategies can be brought to bear on a single luminaire easily and simply.
The power of networking via Power-over-Ethernet and the very nature of Solid State Lighting (LED) combined, produce a sum far greater than its individual parts. Needless to say, this is a quantum leap from where we are today and that is looking at this PoE Lighting technology from only a lighting control perspective.
The final installment of this series will outline what this all means as we translate what we are capable of doing today beyond sustainability, energy efficiency, and savings. We will explore what fully networked lighting is capable of delivering to everyone affected by the PoE lighting system. Meanwhile, start imagining what you wish a lighting system could do!
Missed part 1 of the series? Read it here.