1. Unlocking the
Value of Energy &
Operational Data

2. The Digital Lumens Intelligent LED Lighting System delivers light
where you need it, when you need it, and with maximum efficiency in
any environment – manufacturing, distribution, and others.
Lights. Intelligence. Insight.
Make the move to intelligent lighting today.
Visit: www.digitallumens.com/EL
(617) 723-1200 | info@digitallumens.com
+ Up to 90% energy savings
+ New levels of operational visibility
+ Proven in 200 million square feet of space

3. 3 © 2015 Energy Manager Today
A
s energy costs become a rising
concern for a growing number
of companies, and as energy
systems have become more intelligent,
investments in energy efficiency
projects have seen heightened
activity. While some energy projects
have a payback of ten or 15 years, or
even longer, the implementation
of a lighting controls system can
sometimes have a payback of two to
three years, one reason that many
companies include lighting retrofits
and upgrades to smart lighting
systems in their overall energy
efficiency projects. “One of the key
benefits of a switch to LED lighting lies
in its lower total cost of ownership,”
says Jim McHale, managing director
of Memoori, an independent market
research company focusing on smart
building technology. But there is a
benefit that goes beyond immediate
energy savings, and it lies in the data-
gathering opportunities that can bring
even more long-term value to the
upgrade.
Lighting and Energy
Management Systems Offer
Organization-Wide Data
While the best starting point of any
energy conservation measure may
be arguable, beginning with lighting
systems is simple common sense for
many companies because, regardless
of the use and type of building
involved, it must be lit. “You already
have lights, so you already have those
costs,” says Aaron Kless, director of
application engineering at intelligent
LED systems provider Digital Lumens.
“Since a company must inevitably
spend money on lights, it makes
sense to be smart with your dollars
and get more out of the lighting
system,” he says.
Smart lighting systems allow
companies to finely tune the
monitoring and control of lighting
throughout a facility or multiple
Unlocking the Value of
Energy & Operational Data

4. 4 © 2015 Energy Manager Today
facilities. A recent report from
Navigant Research predicts that over
the next seven years, annual sales for
occupancy sensors, photo sensors and
lighting network gear related to LED
lighting applications will grow from
$1.1 billion in 2013 to $2.7 billion by
2020. Falling LED prices are driving
up adoption rates of LED lamps, which
in turn will drive up the adoption of
intelligent lighting controls. These
lighting control systems gather
innumerable points of operational
data -- from a single building or
across an international portfolio
of sites -- that can show clear
patterns of user behavior, anomalies,
inefficiencies and opportunities for
process improvement.
“The controllable nature of LED
lighting makes it well suited for
use with sensors in smart lighting
applications for a number of
purposes,” says McHale.
For example, data from the motion
sensors of a lighting system could
show that, in a retail environment,
lights in certain areas of the store
are being activated more than lights
in other areas, which indicates that
there is more traffic in that area of
the store. With that data, a manager
might decide to reorganize the store
in order to have the most important
merchandise in those high-traffic
areas. “Smart companies can really
engage with this type of data in order
to gain an advantage,” says Rob Day, a
partner with Black Coral Capital.
While combining digital LEDs with
advanced sensors, control systems
and artificial intelligence will increase
operational efficiencies, research
shows that smart lighting systems
are in use today in only a very low
percentage of buildings, McHale adds.
At a time when commercial buildings
use up to 40 percent of the world’s
total energy consumption -- spending
about $100 billion on energy every
year in the US alone - that may be
changing.
Microsoft is one company that
has seen the necessity of using
data points to inform operational
changes and save money. The
company created software that
turned the 125-building campus
of its headquarters into a “smart
campus” that harvests billions of
data points per week from thousands
of sensors that track equipment
like heaters, air conditioners, fans,
and lights, and that has saved the
company millions of dollars. In one
garage building alone, exhaust fans
had been mistakenly left on for an
entire year, wasting $66,000 in energy
costs. The mistake was uncovered by
the smart buildings solution almost
immediately, and the problem was
corrected, Microsoft says.

5. 5 © 2015 Energy Manager Today
The Challenge of Gathering
and Interpreting Data
W
hile most companies can’t
rival Microsoft in scale, they
can still reap enormous
benefits from data mining. But while
they may know that operational data
can offer invaluable insights into
operations and energy management,
they may not have access to such
data, or they may lack ways to analyze
and interpret it. In order to achieve
operational efficiencies via data
mining, facilities managers or energy
management teams should first
consider how they can:
»» accurately monitor various
equipment, systems, and
personnel;
»» gather data on both energy and
traffic patterns and can synthesize
it in a single system into
meaningful insights, enterprise-
wide.
Intelligent lighting and energy
management systems that provide
detailed data on energy usage and
lighting system performance, and
that offer a dashboard with the ability
to compare efficiency and energy
usage data across multiple facilities,
can be a viable solution, from both a
cost and technology perspective. The
data can help customers determine
when, how and where lighting is used,
allowing them to easily implement
lighting control programs to adjust to
their facilities’ changing needs.
Warehousing and distribution
company SnoTemp Cold Storage,
based in Eugene, Oregon, for
example, needed to install higher
quality lighting and save on energy
expenses. By installing an intelligent
LED lighting system, the company
saved in excess of one million kWh
in lighting-related energy usage and
reduced heat-related energy loads on
refrigeration systems by more than
500,000kWh annually. The savings
came not only from reduced energy
use by the LED lights, but from a
system that mined and interpreted
“Smart companies can really engage with this
type of data in order to gain an advantage.”
--Rob Day, partner with Black Coral Capital

6. 6 © 2015 Energy Manager Today
building data, allowing the company
to:
»» eliminate disruptive re-lamping
and re-ballasting events;
»» automatically turn on, off, or dim
lighting to save energy without
worrying about ramp-up times or
cycling impacts;
»» adapt to widely varying needs of
the organization, such as those in
high traffic, fast turnover product
storage areas vs. seasonally
intense traffic areas vs. low-space
usage during off-season times.
The data also enabled the company
to respond to unscheduled or
unique events, such as operational
emergencies, inventory assessments,
or a facility open house, by instantly
(and remotely) changing lighting
settings to appropriate levels and
saving those settings for future use.
While work teams and maintenance
crews have been happy with the
upgrade for the quality of light and
ease of modifying lighting behaviors,
management is thrilled with its
“ability to collect, analyze and
document facility-wide energy use,
occupancy patterns and savings down
to the individual fixture,” says Jason
Lafferty, VP and general manager for
SnoTemp.
HOW EXACTLY CAN DATA
IMPROVE AN ORGANIZATION’S
EFFICIENCIES?
5 EXAMPLES
With a good intelligent lighting
system, the data gleaned can be
as granular as necessary to gain
insights, such as:
1. Motion sensors are one area of
focus. Off-the-shelf motion
sensors, for example, have on-off
cycles. Once they are activated,
the time-out is generally set for
15 or 30 minutes. In a warehouse
setting, a crew member may
enter a specific aisle on a forklift
to pick up and remove a pallet.
He is there for only a minute or
two before driving out -- but the
lights stay on for 15 minutes. In a
high-traffic area, this may mean
that the light never goes out
because it is retriggered before it
reaches its time-out. If data from
the lighting system shows that
the typical time in the aisle is
two minutes, the motion sensor
can be set to accommodate that,
turning off more quickly. If the
lights are on only 15 percent of
the time rather than all the time,
the resulting savings can be
impressive. “We have seen some
growth in high-bay lighting used
in industrial areas, big box retail,
warehouse spaces,” says Jesse
Foote, a senior research analyst

7. 7 © 2015 Energy Manager Today
Energy efficiency solutions provider
Groom Energy designed and managed
the retrofit, including the upgrade to
Digital Lumens’ intelligent lighting
system.
Moving Forward:
Where Do I Start?
If you’re one of the increasing
numbers of companies looking to
install an intelligent lighting system,
first consider your energy and lighting
goals before you try to discover which
solution is best for you, says Day.
Where do you need more light? What
are your energy targets? What are
your future energy and lighting needs
going to be? Do you want to tie in
other systems such as HVAC, security,
or even plug-load?
Then, Day suggests, decide what type
of data you want from your system.
Think big: “Just a couple of data
points are not that interesting, but
hundreds of thousands of data points
that show where you’re using energy,
where you’re using lighting, can
inform decisions about the space and
use.”
Next, consider who will manage and
monitor the system. “Companies
need to figure out who can treat
energy as a profit center rather than
a cost center,” says Day. “When they
find that person, the role will be not
only to monitor that everything is
with Navigant Research. “That
can be a good target for lighting
controls because you have use of
higher wattage fixtures, which
offers a bigger bang for your buck.
And some of those spaces would
turn lights on and leave them
on all the time, even though big
portions of the space aren’t being
used all the time, so the savings
from occupancy sensors can be
really good.”
2. Intelligent systems can also
indicate where the majority of
time is being spent in a facility,
showing, for example, that the
highest occupancy is farthest
from the door. By reorganizing
the space so the highest traffic
area is closest to the door, the
lights are in use for a shorter
amount of time.
3. A manufacturing facility may
need to produce more products,
and thus is considering
purchasing more equipment. Data
from an intelligent system could
show that in the manufacturing
area, there are no workers after
3 pm. The company might find,
then, that it needs to add shifts
rather than adding equipment.
4. Maximizing demand response
and peak usage can turn an entire
building into an energy asset.
When a company enters into a
demand response program with

8. 8 © 2015 Energy Manager Today
working the way it should, but to find
new ways to generate profit.”
A person with an entrepreneurial
mindset will fully engage with the
data, “rather than, once every few
weeks, opening up a new screen to see
if everything is working the way that
it should.”
Currently, most companies leave
energy management in the hands
of a factory or facility manager who
already has safety, productivity, and
the building to oversee. “They can’t
do all of this,” says Day. “That’s why
we’re seeing companies assign this as
a primary responsibility.”
a utility, they are paid by the
utility to crank down their energy
usage when the utility needs the
extra capacity. “But if you’re
in the middle of a production
run, you don’t want to have
to suddenly turn everything
off just because the utility has
called,” explains Day. “If you
have the right intelligence, you’ll
know the equipment that you
can turn down or turn off first,
or you’ll know where you can
dim the lights where it won’t
be noticed.” Likewise, with a
larger commercial or industrial
building, when a company pays
a higher price for energy during
“peak usage,” managers can
use data to shift energy loads
into a non-peak time, but the
data must be detailed enough
to allow managers to know that
shifts such as this won’t affect
profitability. “They need the
ability to move things around
intelligently,” says Day.
5. Audits using energy data can
show that certain equipment is
going through a busier-than-
usual period. “You might see that
a certain compressor is going
through a lot more cycles than
usual. Maybe a walk-in freezer
is going bad. It’s better to fix it
rather than to wait until it breaks
and you have an emergency
on your hands,” says Day.
“Using energy data helps you do
predictive maintenance.”
Companies need to
figure out who can
treat energy as a
profit center rather
than a cost center.”
--Rob Day, partner with
Black Coral Capital
“

9. The Digital Lumens Intelligent LED Lighting System brings the power of
enterprise-wide energy data to entire operations. Facility managers and
energy management teams have new insight into operational patterns – with
data to support it. Put the power of the Internet of Lights to work for you.
Control. Enhance. Optimize.
Calculate your energy savings by visiting www.digitallumens.com /EL
+ Up to 90% energy savings
+ New levels of operational visibility
+ Proven in 200 million square feet of space
(617) 723-1200 | info@digitallumens.com

10. EL launched Energy Manager Today (www.energymanagertoday.com) in
2012 for energy management professionals, covering energy management-
related services, products, analysis, and events.
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