Today at the IES Street & Area Lighting Conference, North America’s largest conference dedicated to improving the outdoor lighting business of electric utilities and energy service providers, Acuity Brands, through its subsidiary Acuity Brands Lighting, and Silver Spring Networks announced an agreement to jointly develop an intelligent lighting platform for utilities, cities, and large campus operators which will allow them to upgrade their aging lighting infrastructure and establish a path to additional smart city applications and services.

In the first step of the relationship, the two industry leaders will jointly develop a networked street light control solution. This solution will integrate Silver Spring’s standards-based Gen5 IPv6 networking platform and Streetlight.Vision smart city management software, which enables operators to monitor and control networked streetlights, with Acuity Controls’ DTL® DLL Elite™ intelligent photocontrols.

Acuity Brands logo. (Photo courtesy of Acuity Brands)

With more than 45 million street and highway lights in the US, and nearly 300 million street lights worldwide, there is an ongoing trend to upgrade aging infrastructure to networked, long-lasting and efficient LED street and area lighting. Older street lights can consume up to 40% of a city’s energy budget, and require manual identification and maintenance to repair individual luminaires. By networking upgraded LED luminaires, cities can lower costs by as much as 60% by reducing energy expenses and increasing operational efficiency. Intelligent street lights can also vary brightness based on traffic flows, time of night, and inclement weather, helping increase road safety for drivers and pedestrians.

“This joint development effort brings the strengths of two market leaders together. We are delighted to collaborate with Silver Spring to add to our portfolio of technology to deliver proven, smart lighting control and networking to large-scale lighting operators. We anticipate that these solutions will enable our customers to leverage their smart lighting canopy to easily and cost-effectively deploy additional smart city applications over time," said Audwin Cash, Vice President of Acuity Controls.

“We’re honored to work with a leader such as Acuity Brands and be a core part of their solutions portfolio. Like Acuity, we believe that the pace of innovation in networked lighting controls is increasing rapidly, and that combining Acuity’s deep industry knowledge and broad customer base with Silver Spring’s leading networking and smart city management platform will accelerate adoption and value,” said Brandon Davito, Vice President of Smart Cities and Lighting, Silver Spring Networks. “We look forward to being able to help utilities, cities and other operators around the world utilize their smart lighting networks as the linchpin for even more sophisticated smart city applications and services.”

Acuity is one of the world’s largest outdoor lighting solution providers with customers across the US, Europe, and Asia. Acuity’s DTL DLL Elite photocell has set the standard for long-life light sensors and will provide the foundation for the integrated Acuity and Silver Spring solution. Silver Spring Networks has delivered more than 21.5 million critical infrastructure devices worldwide, including selection for nearly 500,000 street lights in what is believed to be the world’s largest smart street lights program in Miami and South Florida. Silver Spring also connects critical infrastructure in iconic global cities such as Chicago, Copenhagen, Glasgow, Melbourne, Mexico City, Paris, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Singapore, and Washington, D.C., among others.

To learn more please visit the Acuity Booth (# 17) and the Silver Spring Networks Booth (#23) at the 2015 Street and Area Lighting Conference in Savannah, Ga. October 5-7.