Silver Spring Networks and Acuity are teaming up to develop a smart lighting platform for utilities, municipalities and campuses. The first step will be the integration of Silver Spring’s IPv6 networking platform and smart city management software with Acuity’s intelligent photocontrols.
The partnership is a natural progression for Silver Spring, which has been connecting infrastructure for utilities for years and has also developed a significant smart city business. Miami has chosen Silver Spring to connect half a million street lights in a project that is believed to be the world’s largest smart lighting project.
Acuity Brands is a $2.4 billion company that provides both indoor and outdoor lighting solutions under various brand names. The company also sells visual light communication (VLC) solutions. VLC is an alternative to Bluetooth that uses LED lighting to locate customers or products with location accuracy of 4 inches, according to Acuity. It only works if the customer’s smartphone is within line of sight of the light overhead.
Silver Spring’s mesh technology is currently in its fifth generation. The company has deployed 25 million devices worldwide and its largest deployment is in Northern California. The company says many customers deploy with one type of sensor and then add other sensors on top of that later.
According to Sean Tippett, Silver Spring’s director of business development for IoT and smart cities, the comoany already leads the market for wireless streetlight controls. Tippett said that when cities upgrade to LED streetlights, they can add smart lighting controls without jeopardizing the positive business case. Once those are in place, controls for water, gas, and traffic can be added using the same infrastructure.
