Shipments of connected luminaires and related equipment into smart buildings will grow to nearly 220 million units by 2030 at a CAGR of 22.6%, according to ABI Research.

As building owners, energy companies, tenants, regulators and others look to improve building performance and appeal, network lighting control (NLC) will be at the vanguard of many smart building projects.

NLC delivers intelligent automation and management of lighting across a property and promises additional benefits available to LED lighting systems. By integrating lighting control with light level and occupancy sensors, energy efficiency is improved and can be leveraged for occupant comfort and safety, space use, and, ultimately, building appeal.

Combined with the growing adoption of wireless connectivity, NLC is emerging as an option across various building types and sizes.

“The ubiquity of lighting demand across commercial buildings, combined with efficiency and other benefits, will make smart lighting the first smart building investment for many properties,” said Jonathan Collins, smart homes and buildings research director at ABI Research. “With a host of dynamic offerings, increasingly simple and flexible installation and maintenance, NLC is pushing smart building capabilities well beyond the traditional preserve of the largest and/or most prestigious projects.”

A host of players from long-standing lighting giants such as Signify and Acuity Brands, as well as NLC specialists including Casambi, Enlighted, Ingy, Silvair and Wirepas, are leveraging wireless to drive NLC into new projects and retrofits alike. Increasingly, NLCs can be deployed, commissioned and reconfigured by engineers using smartphone apps and without dedicated network cabling, local gateways and the predetermined topology that has long complicated and dominated deployments.

Even so, the NLC market remains one of the disparate approaches and vendor ecosystems, despite the ongoing development of ecosystem rather than vertically integrated NLC offerings.

“For some years still, clients will have to weigh up several conflicting technologies, approaches and offerings within the space to determine which best suits their immediate and future smart building requirements,” Collins said.

• The global smart building market is expected to reach $570bn by 2030, registering a CAGR of 26.8% from 2023 to 2030, according to Grand View Research.