LEDs Drive Cutting-Edge IIoT Applications

New applications driven by light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are helping lead the adoption of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), with the combination of efficient lighting and connectivity opening the door for numerous smart facility-management applications.

LEDs -- which have a number of benefits to providing more overall energy efficiency for manufacturing facilities and other commercial buildings -- are poised to experience fairly explosive growth in the coming years, Konkana Khaund, principal consultant at Frost and Sullivan, told Design News.

Until recently, LEDs -- which have been on the market for some time -- have not been widely used and have been passed over in the commercial sector in favor of fluorescent lighting due to cost and other factors, she said.

“The penetration rate was very conservative, say, 10 years ago,” Khaund told us. “They were cost prohibitive to be used on a frequent basis.”

However, with prices coming down and new commercial lighting guidelines in the United States, requiring that by 2020 all lamps must have 45 lumens per watt of power and be 70% more efficient than levels required in 2012, the technology is well on its way to broad adoption, she said.

LEDs currently have 40% penetration rate globally, and are expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 16% to 17% over five years between 2015 and 2020, she said. By 2020, the market for LEDs will be $70,000 million globally, according to Frost and Sullivan estimates.

New applications driven by light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are helping lead the adoption of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), with the combination of efficient lighting and connectivity opening the door for numerous smart facility-management applications for manufacturers.
(Source: Relumination )

Driving this growth are a number of factors, including aforementioned recent legislation in the US that demands more energy-efficient lighting from businesses, the reduced energy costs overall that LEDs provide, and the longer replacement life of this type of lighting, Khaund said.

“The biggest benefit is energy efficiency, because LEDs allow you to use far less light and heat output,” she said. “This reduced energy consumption results in reduced energy costs and really provides an economic benefit.”

Aside from the obvious drivers of the use of LEDs in manufacturing facilities, these type of lights and associated technologies have great potential to be an integral part of new applications driven by smart technology, energy efficiency, and connectivity, said Pat Wilson, director of the Milwaukee Design Center for Creation Design Services at Creation Technologies.

[Visit Creation Technologies at Booth 571 at Pacific Design & Manufacturing, Feb. 9-11, at the Anaheim Convention Center.]

Creation Technologies is a global electronics manufacturing and service provider based in Burnaby, British Columbia. The company manufactures LED lighting products, as well as designs and develops custom LED products and solutions.

“Since LEDs are controlled by integrated circuits, this opens up the possibility of adds-ons to the LED controllers or LED drivers,” Wilson said. “We hear regularly in conversation with our customers that IOT/IOE capabilities are being designed into LED drivers to do more than just control lighting.”

For example, LED drivers could be WiFi-enabled, act as thermostats, or measure other environmental conditions, Wilson said. “This ‘connected device’ functionality relies heavily on sensors and software integration,” he said.

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Intelligent management systems that include LEDs also are trending in the manufacturing space, where the convergence of connectivity and energy-efficient lighting are leading to new intelligent facility applications, according to Khaund.

“They are prompting the use of network lighting to make intelligent decisions on behalf of the buildings that integrate security cameras, smart-energy usage, and other applications,” she said. “All of this is possible with an intelligent LED socket. Particularly for industrial facilities, this is a much better, faster, smarter way [to manage facilities].”

Wilson cited a number of reasons LEDs are a particularly good fit for new smart lighting solutions and beyond for manufacturers, including that they result in significantly less environmental impact from production of the light fixture, use, and disposal than other lighting technologies. They also produce a reduced load on HVAC systems to compensate for the heat dissipated from the lighting fixtures, he said.

In addition, deploying LEDs reduces the risk of manufacturing quality issues resulting from building maintenance activities interfering with production, Wilson added.

Elizabeth Montalbano is a freelance writer who has written about technology and culture for more than 15 years. She has lived and worked as a professional journalist in Phoenix, San Francisco, and New York City. In her free time she enjoys surfing, traveling, music, yoga, and cooking. She currently resides in a village on the southwest coast of Portugal.

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