It is very likely that you have heard more than one person speak or heard some news on the subject of IoT or Internet of Things. Beyond the products created to make individuals and homes smart, there is also the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), a trend that has dramatically increased the operational efficiency of many industrial and commercial companies around the world, and Mexico is not the exception.

There are several ways to implement the IIoT, but one of the most agile, easy to scale and finance is smart lighting.

1. Measurable energy savings and ROI (return on investment)

One of the biggest obstacles to investing in IIoT solutions is the cost of the infrastructure and the return on investment, which is generally difficult to define. Smart lighting provides an immediate and quantifiable return in the form of documented energy savings – this is where the fun starts. Through a combination of advanced controls, such as task adjustment and daylight harvesting, a smart LED lighting system can deliver lighting-related energy savings of up to 90%. Over time, these savings may more than justify switching from traditional or basic LED lighting to smart LED lighting.

2. Smart lighting can be controlled from the palm of your hand

Smart LED lamps feature unique sensors, which allow the light to turn on and off, or simply vary in intensity, based on variable data coming from the sensors, such as room occupancy, traffic patterns, and more. The applications use the cloud and communicate directly with the sensors on the LED to coordinate lighting strategies or adjust light based on natural light sources.

This interconnected technology allows managers to control every aspect of a building's lighting system from their laptop or even a remote mobile device. In addition, energy consumption dashboards and software record, display and report lighting patterns that help users identify anomalies and inefficiencies that point to opportunities to improve business operations and employee productivity and safety.

3. Compliance

In the same sense, by increasing the safety and well-being of workers, the use of this type of technology allows organizations to comply with the best standards and, therefore, adhere to the demands of labor and environmental legislation, which sometimes they are not even known and can lead to accidents, breaches, fines and operational stoppages.

4. Making the company sustainable is easily achievable

As smart lighting grids can be customized and include remote lighting management capability, this plays an important role in helping organizations achieve sustainability goals, whether those goals are self-identified or by efficiency standards required by the law.

A saving in energy consumption is also a way to comply with environmental legislation or policies, because together with a lower electricity bill, companies will be reducing their carbon footprint.

5. Smart industrial lighting leads to smart buildings

Environmental monitoring, non-lighting energy controls, security alerts, and space utilization can all be introduced and integrated into smart lighting networks. All of these sensor-based solutions are designed to reduce overhead costs, keep inventory up-to-date, protect organizational assets, and perhaps most importantly, introduce a new data-driven flow of information that allows companies to easily identify new opportunities for operational efficiencies, creating an infrastructure for a smart building.

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