VISIONS OF LIGHTING’S FUTURE

BY CRAIG DILOUIE, CLCP, LC

What will lighting look like in 10 years and beyond? This is a big question the Illuminating Engineering Society tackled with Beyond 2030: What Do You See? Written by industry experts, these essays look at what challenges the industry will face and where it should focus its energies. Overall, it’s an engaging and insightful collection taking on the challenging task of predicting possible futures for light. Major topics include integration of light sources and building materials, advanced lighting controls, lighting design, energy codes, DC microgrids, renewable energy, lighting and health, and more. Many of these topics stem from today’s trends but are projected forward where they are imagined as coming to fruition.

Architecture. Among six disruptive trends in architectural lighting, Brad Koener (“Welcome to the Luminous ’20s”) identifies lighting embedded in architecture as being realized in the next decade. He says architecture will increasingly serve as a delivery platform for data-driven experiences and buildingoccupant interactions.

Advanced lighting controls. Many of the articles focus on this important topic. Lawrence O. Lamontange Jr., LC, CLCP (“The Future of Lighting Controls”) sees controls transitioning from the energy code to the Internet of Things era, shifting from emphasizing energy savings to generating useful data.

While control system interfaces are becoming simpler, the systems themselves are becoming more complex, incentivizing contractors to develop their knowledge and capabilities to gain discretionary, high-value business. Education will key, as expertise is pushed down the purchasing chain, along with potential relationships with low-voltage specialists, commissioning agents, and distributors.

Joseph Gulyab (“Advanced Lighting Controls Will Unlock Dynamic Lighting”) goes further, stating that controls are capable not only of producing data but enabling all lighting to be highly responsive (light, spectrum, time) to individual users and their specific needs. Key to this will be advances in 5G and machine learning that bring individual luminaire control together with user data to create dynamic, real-time, and individually tailored lighting environments.

Lighting design. Christopher Cuttle (“A Redefined Purpose for Indoor Lighting Practice”) believes lighting design will shift from an emphasis on lighting the workplane to lighting the volume of a space. He proposes a method based on identifying lighting design objectives specific to the application and producing an optimal target/ambient illuminance ratio, which accounts for light falling on target surfaces and resulting interreflections. Rather than focusing on vision, the ultimate goal is satisfying or exceeding user expectations based on 1) identifying how bright or dim the ambient lighting appearance should be, and then 2) determining which objects and tasks require more illumination to establish a visual hierarchy. Wenye Hu, Dorukalp Durmus, and Wendy Davis (“Beyond 2030: Beyond Luminous Efficacy”), meanwhile, believe that by focusing on application instead of product efficiency, additional energy savings can be gained. Potential ideas, they state, include smarter dimming (high-end trim), automatic adjustment of spectral output to minimize absorption by objects without affecting their perceived color, and sensing that automatically illuminates the field of view and minimizes what isn’t.

And Mark Lien (“Lighting Forecast by the Decades”) foresees augmented reality being increasingly used to visually preview lighting in a space before final selection and installation. Energy standards, meanwhile, will be consolidated or eliminated, with only a minimum and a stretch standard offered; government will shift from focusing on maximizing energy efficiency to minimizing carbon.

Light and health. Several of the articles look at how the lighting industry is evolving in its ability to help create healthy building environments. Douglas Steel (“Beyond 2030”) anticipates the industry will transcend its current focus on circadian health to regarding lighting as a modular system for numerous health-related functions.

These and many other essays provide interesting reading about possible lighting futures. Once a slow, plodding field, lighting has become a dynamic practice that is continuously evolving and in which change is rapid.

Download Beyond 2030: What Do You See? free at https://bit.ly/3zrHZkg

Craig DiLouie, CLCP, LC, principal of ZING Communications, Inc., is a consultant, analyst and reporter specializing in the lighting and electrical industries, and a regular contributor to LM&M. You may contact Craig at cdilouie@zinginc.com.