Smart Lighting Most Widely Adopted in Industrial Market Yet Grows at Fastest Pace in Residential Space

Smart lighting has been developed for years, but products and applications are not really used widely. In 2017, however, smart lighting has entered rapid development. According to the latest data of LEDinside, the global smart lighting market reached close to US$4.6 billion in 2017 with an annual growth rate of 95%. The market size is expected to reach US$13.4 billion in 2020.

In recent years, with the popularization of technologies, products and relevant concepts, the applications of smart lighting grow wider and more diversified, including commercial/industrial lighting, outdoor lighting, residential lighting and public lighting, etc. Among these fields, smart lighting solutions are first adopted in public and outdoor places.

At present, the expansion of global smart lighting market is still led by infrastructure construction in the public and outdoor places, of which the biggest market is the construction of "smart city".

In the early 21st century, the United States, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore all carried out plans of smart city, setting off the global trend of smart city construction. Nowadays, smart cities have entered a stage of planning and construction in general. There are over 500 smart cities under construction in the world. Among them, Europe, the United States and Asia are more active to build smart cities.

According to the report of National League of Cities, about 66% of cities in the U.S. have begun to develop smart city technology, while 25% of those without any smart city systems are exploring how to implement it. For China, three batches of Smart City Pilot Project have been announced, including a total of 290 cities. In addition, the construction of a smart city will be a key step for China to promote urbanization during the 13th Five-Year Plan period.

Thanks to the support of governments and major cities worldwide who are making every effort to promote smart city projects, the construction of smart city is expected to accelerate further in the future. Therefore, the development of smart lighting, a significant part of smart city, will also be given priority in the public domain.

Smart lighting systems can improve the energy efficiency of cities, bringing immediate practical benefits to them, moreover, citizens can make use of smart lighting to get information for traffic and public spaces. For example, smart lighting solutions have been applied to street lights, which are widely allocated in cities, in order to realize automatic adjustment of brightness based on traffic, remote lighting control, fault alarm, anti-theft and monitoring of street lamp power cables, remote meter reading, etc. The application of smart lighting can significantly save power, improve public lighting management system, and save maintenance costs. This is why smart lighting has attracted increasing attention in city construction.

Although the smart street lights are still in the early stage of development, projects have been carried out in the United States, India, the Middle East, China, etc. to promote the use of the smart street lamps. Among the trend of smart city construction, the market of smart street lamps will have a bright future. According to LEDinside, outdoor lighting applications have accounted for 11% of the global smart lighting market in 2017.

In addition to smart street lights, smart lighting will also gradually penetrate into public places such as stations, airports, underground stations, underground parking lots, schools, libraries, hospitals, gymnasiums, museums and so on. According to LEDinside, public lighting applications have accounted for 6% of the global smart lighting market in 2017.