On July 15, The Connected Lighting Alliance, founded by GE Lighting, Lutron, OSRAM, Panasonic, Philips, and TOSHIBA in August 2012 as the primary advocate of wireless connectivity in lighting applications, announced that it endorsed ZigBee Light Link as the preferred common open standard for residential connected lighting applications, simplifying choices for both lighting companies and consumers.

With ZigBee Light Link, consumers can realize wireless control over all their LED fixtures like light bulbs, timers, remotes and switches through systems developed by an array of manufacturers. Currently, several companies provides wireless lighting products for the residential market. However, many of these products are not based on common interoperable standards, so consumers are often confused about what systems will support their needs and the lighting fixtures installed in their homes.

This decision represents the first time an alliance of leading lighting companies has unanimously endorsed a common open standard for wireless lighting solutions.

Zoltan Vamos, Chair of the Board of Directors of The Connected Lighting Alliance, expressed that having such broad support from leading companies is a significant milestone in residential wireless lighting becoming mainstream. It will increase the number of interoperable wireless lighting solutions, and simplify decision making for lighting companies and consumers.

Following eight months of close collaboration between its member companies to study and evaluate multiple open standards, The Connected Lighting Alliance concluded that ZigBee Light Link enables easy-to-install wireless lighting systems, natively supports a wide array of lighting features, and ensures product interoperability.

"ZigBee Light Link is specifically developed for interoperable and easy-to-use consumer lighting and control products. Products using this standard will let consumers change lighting remotely to reflect ambiance, task or season, all while managing energy use and making their homes greener,” said Tobin Richardson, CEO of the ZigBee Alliance.

The ZigBee Light Link standard, now endorsed by The Connected Lighting Alliance, will encourage the development of robust, interoperable wireless lighting systems.

"At present, a number of companies have adopted ZigBee Light Link to manufacture residential lighting products, with further adoption by other tier-one lighting providers projecting to follow suit," said Phillip Maddocks, analyst, low-bandwidth and smart networks at IHS. "In accordance with the latest IHS research, more than 10 million ZigBee-enabled light bulbs are projected to be shipped for the residential market by 2017 and conforming to a common standard will improve interoperability which offers significant advantages to both the consumer, and the lighting provider."

In the future, connected lighting will become part of a larger connected home ecosystem. In order to support this evolution, The Connected Lighting Alliance is reaching out to other standards bodies to ensure that ZigBee Light Link is supported by other home automation protocols, like ZigBee Home Automation and ECHONET Lite.