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The U.S. Department of Energy’s solid-state lighting program is bringing focus to the industry’s efforts to push solid-state lighting (SSL) systems into the realm of connectivity infrastructure for the Internet of Things.
Leading into its annual Technology Development Workshop next month in Portland, Ore., DOE will host a “unique and critically important opportunity for the lighting industry,” its inaugural Connected Lighting Systems Meeting. The meeting, Nov. 16, will bring together technologists in the lighting, semiconductor and IT industries “to tackle a question that's been generating a great deal of buzz lately: how can we best leverage the coming collision between lighting systems and the Internet of Things (IoT)?” DOE said in its periodical SSL Postings e-mail newsletter.
“We know that SSL technology, by its very nature, facilitates the integration of intelligence, network interfaces, and sensors into lighting devices, which can result not only in reduced energy consumption, but also in improved lighting performance. But integrating this with other building systems, as well as with the much larger IoT, requires a concerted effort that takes into account the knowledge bases and lessons learned from multiple technologies and industries.”
The Connected Lighting Systems Meeting is DOE’s first effort focused on that subject, a gathering requested by lighting-industry stakeholders at a roundtable held in March. The meeting aims at creating a broad-based framework for discussion and collaboration in a bid to avoid confusion and the “anything goes” atmosphere that reigned in early days of SSL.
The keynote address will be given by Tom Herbst, CTO of IoT Solutions for Cisco Systems. Gabe Arnold of the DesignLights Consortium will explore why yesterday's lighting-control technology has met with limited success, and lay the groundwork for the ensuing discussions on how tomorrow's connected lighting systems might overcome these issues.
Expert panels will host deep-dive discussions in several key areas including interoperability, protocols for lighting systems to report their own energy consumption, and different approaches to reducing the complexity of lighting-system configuration and recent examples of installed systems that demonstrate benefits that could result in the creation of new business models and revenue streams.
To register, or for more information, visit the DOE SSL website.