IoT/Smart Lighting, Office

LonMark joins big tech groups backing LuxLive 2020

LonMark joins big tech groups backing LuxLive 2020
The lighting at the Foster-designed 10 Gresham Street in London is controlled and monitored by a LonWorks open system infrastructure. As well as the lighting, the occupants at the 23,200 square metre landmark office can control the heating and blinds using a web-based interface with the BMS.

LonMark International has become the latest of the major technology groups to become a supporter of the LuxLive 2020 exhibition.

The global membership organisation – created to promote its open control protocol – will bring its experts to London in November to demonstrate how its tech can integrate with lighting systems.

LonMark International has been a major driving force in the establishment of interoperable standards and is committed to educating the market on the value of open systems.

Thousands of companies use LonWorks to control lighting networks worldwide.

Leading members include Vossloh-Schwabe, Schneider, LG, Distech Controls, Honeywell, Avnet Silica, EnOcean and Itron.

The LonMark Lighting Task Group is focused on helping with the integration of multi-vendor lighting products based on LonWorks technology.

Home, commercial, industrial, emergency, and even streetlighting are all included.

So-called smart cities are also a prime focus for the group. It recently formed the LonMark Smart City Council (SCC) to address the needs of town halls, city managers, street lighting companies, technology providers and integrators.

LonWorks cuts energy by 40% in Milton Keynes

Faced with rising energy and maintenance costs due to its ageing street lighting, Milton Keynes fitted an intelligent control and monitoring system based on LonWorks technology. The network includes smart electronic ballasts from SELC Ireland and enterprise monitoring software from Streetlight.Vision. The platform allows control devices from multiple manufacturers to interact with each other. The system uses new lower-wattage streetlights that last longer, offer higher-quality lighting, and can communicate over a network. Each light includes a smart electronic ballast that identifies lamp and ballast failures measures energy use, running hours, and voltage, and enables remote command through the power line network, thanks to Echelon’s embedded power line transceivers. The solution has helped cut Milton Keynes’s energy use by 40% – a substantial savings that will help pay for the system, according to Kevin Whiteside, the city’s chief highways and transportation engineer.

LonMark says its platform can reduce energy consumption by up to 40 per cent, lower maintenance costs by up to 50 per cent and allow for remote monitoring and control, including diagnostic reporting of irregular lamp behaviour, individual lamp failure, and lamp temperature.

LonWorks (the ‘Lon’ stands for local operating network) is a networking platform specifically created to address the needs of control applications such as lighting.

The platform is built on a protocol created by the U.S. based Echelon Corporation for networking devices over media such as twisted pair, powerlines, fibre optics, and RF.

As well as lighting, it’s used for the automation of various functions within buildings such as lighting and HVAC; see building automation.

Last month, the wireless protocol organisation Wi-SUN – which has 230 members in 26 countries – announced that it is backing LuxLive.

Experts from LonMark International will speak in the Smart Spaces Arena at LuxLive 2020, which takes place on Wednesday 11 November and Thursday 12 November 2020 at ExCeL London. For more information to go LUXLIVE 2020.

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