Facing the new era of LED intelligent lighting to promote the added value of lighting products

LED has become the mainstream in the lighting market. According to a report published in the past by TrendForce's Green Energy Business Department in LEDinside, the global LED lighting market will reach an output value of US $33.1 billion in 2017, with a penetration rate of 52%. The future market still has some room for development. The reason why LED has become the mainstream in the lighting market is mainly because of its low power consumption, slow light decay speed, longer service life than general lighting equipment and low replacement rate, which can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which is now the world's energy saving and carbon reduction as a mission, is the best choice.

Therefore, under the promotion of energy-saving policies in many countries, the primary task is to replace street lamps into LED lamps. The cases of street lamps "replacing new clothes" are growing rapidly in countries around the world. LEDinside also predict that the global LED street lamp penetration rate will be in 2018. Come to 65%. However, with the end of the tide of replacement and the subsequent market saturation, the relevant industries have also begun to think about how to adjust the next development strategy to enhance the added value of LED lighting products?

Catering to today's mainstream trend is a good entry point, from the Internet of Things, smart cities to smart homes, etc., these will become a "trend" in the next few years, LED lighting can also be integrated with related technologies, from the traditional single-function lighting products, towards multi-functional intelligent development, intelligent lighting is expected to become a new blue ocean after the replacement era of LED lamps.

More humane "intelligent lighting 」

Different from traditional LED lighting, the focus of the industry in the past mostly stayed on how to effectively save electricity and energy, or the replacement of traditional lamps. However, in the stage of intelligent lighting, after combining various Internet of things related technologies and adding many intelligent functions, in addition to saving more electricity, it is also gradually developing towards a more diversified and humanized trend.

Originally, people only had lighting needs for light, but when they move towards intelligent development, they will bring more choices. Taiwan Philips lighting marketing associate Peng Xiaolan said, from the consideration of the environment to the use of objects, each industry, the field of "light" needs are different, so Philips in assisting the industry to build intelligent lighting system, the first step will be to clarify what the real needs of consumers and owners, and according to its development of appropriate intelligent lighting solutions.

Take intelligent street lamps as an example, because they belong to public construction and have high utilization rate, safety and energy saving have become the first consideration; such as hotels, department stores, retail and other indoor commercial places, the user experience is emphasized, how to create a comfortable lighting environment, so that customers can enjoy themselves in shopping or accommodation. Or, for a pointer building like 101, the image is extremely important, and beauty becomes its first priority. In places such as office buildings or factories where employees are the main users, it is expected that employees will not feel tired and thus reduce the error rate.

Enter the "speed of light" communication era

Once the crown on the "smart" two words, so the imagination has become infinite possibilities, intelligent lighting applications even far beyond the general we recognize the "lighting" use. Now, more and more electronic products need the Internet, and in the future, when everything is connected to the Internet, the phenomenon of network traffic jam will only become more and more serious. Many people feel quite impatient in the matter of network speed, but in a few years ago, perhaps no one had ever thought that light can transmit data in addition to lighting! Since Professor Harald Haas of the University of Edinburgh shouted "Li-Fi" this technology, immediately polished the public's vision, I believe that in a few years, the phenomenon of network traffic jam is expected to be relieved.

Li-Fi based on visible light communication technology, is a new way to access the Internet, unexpectedly, LED bulbs in addition to power saving, in the Li-Fi can also be used as a network signal transmitter, to achieve wireless Internet access within the scope of the light. Unlike the now crowded radio spectrum, the Li-Fi visible light spectrum has more bandwidth and even has a transmission speed of more than Wi-Fi a hundred times! Therefore, this technology is also regarded as a revolutionary change for wireless network communication technology. Airlines that have always banned mobile phones and other electromagnetic wave products on board will no longer be feasible to make phone calls and surf the Internet in the future if Li-Fi are applied to on-board lighting in the future.

Combined with visible light communication technology, a LED lamp that can be seen everywhere can easily alleviate the suffering of the public's network turtle speed and improve the convenience of using the network. Perhaps in the future, when you stand under a street lamp, you can download a movie. Of course, not only visible light communication technology, now LED lighting has also begun to join a variety of wireless communication modules, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee and so on are mainstream. LEDinside believes that because the energy-saving efficiency of intelligent lighting is higher than that of ordinary lighting, coupled with the continuous reduction of costs, its market size will increase year by year, and it is estimated that ZigBee is expected to have a market share of 61% in 2019.

Wireless communication is also the only communication method in non-intelligent lighting applications. Compared with wireless, wired communication technology is still the first choice in terms of stability, safety and anti-interference, such as KNX, DALI, C- bus and other technologies. In the traditional concept, lamps must be connected by wires, but now they can also be connected by network wires and driven by electronic signals. This is PoE(Power over Ethernet, Power over Ethernet) technology applied to LED lamps. This technology can also enable each lamp installed on the ceiling to have its own IP address. At the same time, light has the functions of accurate positioning and navigation, the accuracy is even within 50 centimeters. In addition, connecting to the Ethernet network can also reduce the risk of traditional power supplies running 220 volt wires in the ceiling.

Philips, a major lighting manufacturer, imported the technology into the Deloitte building in the Netherlands and Carrefour in France. The Deloitte Building, known as the "mobile building", is the world's most advanced smart office, through the use of PoE lighting system combined with visible light communication (VLC), employees can control the color temperature and brightness changes of the lamps above the seat through the smart phone, and each user in the light adjustment at the same time will not have the problem of neighbor interference. In Carrefour's application, it is used to detect the location of customers in stores, transmit commodity information and preferential messages required by customers, etc., so as to save time and effort in shopping.

Energy saving benefit of loading sensor push-up

"When the traditional lamps are replaced by LED lamps, about 50% to 70% of the electricity consumption can be saved. If we use intelligent methods to manage and use them well, we can save another 10% to 20% of the electricity consumption. 」 Peng Xiaolan said so.

In the intelligent lighting system, LED lamps and lanterns can also be combined with various types of sensors to form an intelligent control system to play the maximum value of energy saving. The advantage of the sensor is that the lighting equipment can make the appropriate response at the "right time" to master the best time to use the LED lighting equipment.

For example, an LED lamp equipped with a photosensitive sensor can sense the brightness change of the external light source, thereby controlling the switch of the lamp and adjusting the brightness. The most significant example is the intelligent street lamp, due to the four seasons of day and night have different time, the traditional street lamp opening and closing by the Taiwan power according to the central weather bureau issued by the sunset sunrise schedule timing control, but some areas may be due to narrow roadway, insufficient lighting and other reasons, resulting in "early dark 」.

The photosensitive sensor can detect the weather profile at any time. Under different changes of sunny and rainy day and night, the intelligent street lamp can be automatically turned on or off according to the result of sensing the external light source. This will meet the needs of passers-by and energy-saving more than the timing switch. It can reduce the use probability of street lamps in areas with sufficient light, while areas with insufficient light can be lit in advance.

Lighting is based on human needs, so the use of lighting equipment is more closely related to human behavior patterns. Nowadays, the lighting system is more humanized. For example, it can sense whether someone passes by and let the lighting equipment turn on or off automatically. This concept is similar to photosensitive sensing, which allows the lighting equipment to decide the appropriate time to switch on and off, so as to avoid power consumption caused by continuous opening when no one is using it. Especially for office buildings or factories, etc., for lighting fields that need huge power consumption, the ability to automatically sense the flow of people will bring a lot of help to save operating costs.

The sensing of the flow of people can be achieved by loading radar and infrared sensors that can detect human body temperature. However, there are still differences in the use of the two. Zhang Wengui, senior marketing manager of Infineon, said that compared with radar, infrared sensing range is more limited and susceptible to temperature interference, while radar is less susceptible to external environmental factors and has a larger sensing range. However, in the end, it is still necessary to make use choices according to the application in different occasions. For example, the range of conference rooms is usually not too large, so infrared sensing can be used, while storage applications with high enough height and large enough range are more suitable for radar sensing. However, Zhang Wengui stressed that in order to achieve excellent recognition rate, a single sensor alone cannot make the most accurate judgment. He believes that the sensing technology of intelligent lighting in the future should move towards the integration of various sensing methods.

The scale effect has not yet taken shape.

Intelligent street lights can be said to be the current application of intelligent lighting, the development of a relatively rapid project. From the perspective of application, public construction such as intelligent street lamps usually takes the lead in starting under the leadership of municipal governments, and becomes the first field to import LED intelligent lighting system as a demonstration field for the construction of intelligent cities.

Although the public domain is the first application place, the commercial and industrial fields will be the largest application field of intelligent lighting, such as shopping malls, buildings, factories, etc., because of its long lighting time and huge power consumption, due to the standardization of electricity consumption policy and the consideration of operating costs, and through intelligent control to achieve the effect of energy saving. Take one of the most common examples in Taiwan as an example. For example, convenience stores have extremely high distribution density. Some stores are even open 24 hours a day. Electricity consumption alone is too much for stores. Assuming that lighting equipment with sensing function is introduced, if no one is detected in a certain area, the light source can be turned off or weakened to save electricity consumption.

In Europe and the United States, because of the high cost of local maintenance manpower, owners are more inclined to use intelligent lighting systems to reduce the inconvenience of management and reduce the cost burden. Second, because Europe and the United States and other countries tend to pay more attention to energy conservation and carbon reduction and promote more implementation, so the development of the region in the field of intelligent lighting is relatively faster than other regions.

However, even if the implementation of the concept of intelligent lighting in many countries have gradually formed, but according to the relevant data, the current penetration rate of intelligent lighting market is still less than 2%, even if everyone is familiar with the intelligent lighting system can bring what advantages, but the scale effect has not yet formed. The LEDinside is pointed out that with the gradual maturity of future technologies and the diversification of product forms, the market will show substantial growth after the popularization of the concept of intelligent lighting. It is expected that the output value of US $13.427 billion in 2020 will be reached, and the prospect is still worth looking forward.

Breaking through the bottleneck of intelligent home lighting development

In terms of smart home lighting, Philips's smart light bulb Hue is a more representative product. Users can remotely control the lamps through the App of the mobile device, and can also create personalized lighting applications according to the needs of the situation, atmosphere and emotion. This kind of intelligent light bulb in the use of people full of expectations and freshness, but in the promotion will also encounter some problems.

In the field of commerce and industry, it seems that intelligent lighting only waits for the time to be ripe and has considerable development prospects, but it is slow to enter the home market. Imagine, if you install a smart light gun in your home, what would you do with it? Use APP remote control, dimming and color, and changing various modes in line with personal needs... These functions are currently available on the market. Almost all smart light guns can be done, but the question is, is it really necessary?

For example, walking over to press the switch on the wall, taking out the mobile phone, finding the APP and turning it on, and then operating the lamp switch, it seems that the traditional method is more time-saving and labor-saving, but what really needs to be considered is that the value of smart bulbs should be more than that.

This is also the bottleneck that consumers generally encounter at present, "consumers have not realized what smart light bulbs can do at home! 」 Peng Xiaolan believes that intelligent lighting is not just a single lamp and a switch so simple, but the need to link with other home equipment to form an intelligent control system, the overall operation in order to achieve the meaning of real intelligence, otherwise consumers will eventually be full of "smart" but useless light bulbs lose interest. Intelligent lighting in the development of smart home, more need is how to construct a complete system from all aspects, such as the integration of curtains, air conditioning, audio and video equipment, rather than separate.

In addition, the industry also analyzes that consumers' acceptance of smart lighting products is still low, and due to non-uniform standards, consumers cannot directly install and use the smart lighting products they buy, or integrate different brands. This is easy to reduce consumers' willingness to use. Compared with traditional LED lamps and lanterns, intelligent lighting products are not expensive, which is also easy to make consumers timid. If you want to let smart lighting into every household, in the application of cost and convenient use of the platform and other factors, it will be a problem that must be paid attention.

At present, the communication protocol and control platform are not unified. The communication protocol alone has different types such as KNX, BACnet, DALI, ZigBee, etc. How to establish a common standard is also a major challenge for today's intelligent lighting. In particular, intelligent lighting is not a single industry can do it on its own, but a combination of LED lighting industry, system providers, software service providers, household equipment, capital communication enterprises and even different government departments. Therefore, it is not as easy as imagined on the road of cross-border integration. If there is no sharing mechanism between them, it may become one of the development bottlenecks.

However, Peng Xiaolan put forward a different view. From another perspective, she believes that at this stage, there is no need to stick to the unity of standards. Further explanation, since intelligent lighting is still in its infancy, if rigid norms and standards are adopted at this time, it will limit the development of software and hardware. What's more, the future technology continues to evolve, and the birth of any new technology may also affect the change of standards one after another.