We know them from the front doors of our homes – motion detectors. They switch on the lights when we approach the entrance. Sometimes they also switch them on when a neighbor’s cat walks by. But can such systems be used in cities and companies?
Streetlights today have set hours and daylight levels at which they are switched on – irrespective of the traffic volume. Cities and companies can easily install sensors and advanced lighting management systems on their exterior luminaires.
We are convinced that smart outdoor lighting management systems are the future. Lighting managers want to save resources, enhance safety and still meet individual lighting needs. In the years to come, many municipalities and companies will rely on motion detectors that improve people’s quality of life and offer them more safety.
The use of outdoor motion detectors has many advantages for cities and companies:
- Saving energy and operating hours
- If lights in places with little traffic at night, such as parks, industrial areas or regional stations, are switched on on an on-demand basis, operators save electricity and also extend the service life of their systems by reducing the number of operating hours.
- Less light pollution
- In large cities in particular, unnecessary permanent lighting causes problems for people and animals – sensors on luminaires protect our environment.
- More safety
- By using sensor-controlled lights, lighting technicians can also make problematic areas such as underpasses, sports grounds or company premises at risk of vandalism safer. Surveillance cameras are also dependent on light, for example, in order to be able to capture usable image material. Here, sensors can switch up to higher light levels during movement.
Motion detectors therefore help cities and companies to reduce lighting and use it in a more targeted way at the same time. Lighting adjustments are no problem either – when an event takes place in a park, the city can deactivate the motion sensors and set a manually controlled high lighting level for the evening.
It is also important that the motion detectors – unlike those on the front door – monitor their environment particularly reliably and are not triggered when cats pass by or trees sway in the wind. The technology already meets these special requirements: Modern passive infrared sensors can, for example, ignore tree movements during windy conditions and also distinguish small animals from pedestrians.
The intelligent lighting control system automatically dims down street lighting into idle mode during off-peak traffic times. The brightness of the each luminaire is reduced to 20 percent. As soon as human activity is detected, for example pedestrians, cyclists or vehicles, the luminaires in the surrounding area increase their brightness to the standard level.
Sensor technology has made great progress in recent years. This makes it worthwhile for users to get started. Further innovations are to be expected in the future – perhaps we will soon be able to control the light colour according to our needs or use cameras as motion detectors, offering us even more evaluation options.
As Posted by Matthias Weber on Linkedin
