Last week, Acuity Brands announced a strategic partnership with, light sensory networks firm, Sensity Systems. Acuity Brands and Sensity intend to develop a joint solution that further accelerates energy-efficient LED lighting into a smart, connected platform for the Internet of Things (IoT).

Their smart lighting solutions will be targeted at city scale projects, commercial and retail buildings, airports and universities. It will concentrate on improving energy conservation, public services, safety, security and parking, but also brings additional value through a wide range of innovative applications. Acuity Brands and Sensity have already begun the process of implementing commercial deployments with their initial clients.

The timing of the partnership seems shrewd in terms of market projections but also when considering national initiatives. Both companies have expressed that their combined solution will fit well the goals of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Presidential Challenge for Advanced Outdoor Lighting.

The Presidential Challenge is part of the DOE's Better Buildings Initiative program, and aims to work on a municipal level to upgrade 1.5 million U.S. street lights to high-efficiency LEDs by 2017.

As comprehensively analysed in a recent Memoori report on Wireless Lighting Controls, the OECD and EIA estimate that cutting the energy used by lighting systems by 40% would save $53 billion in the USA alone. Whilst annual savings from energy costs across the globe could be 3 to 4 times as much.

Acuity Brands and Sensity are well positioned to be a huge influence on such savings, but can also add considerable value, beyond illumination, through a widespread upgrade of lighting systems. The energy efficiency LED renovation represents the ideal platform to deploy a smart lighting network that will not only deliver important cost, safety, efficiency, energy and carbon pollution reduction benefits, but also transform the lighting quality in cities.

"Partnering with a lighting manufacturer of the caliber of Acuity Brands will propel our light sensory network vision to another level", said Hugh Martin, Chairman and CEO, Sensity Systems. "By leveraging the customer network and solutions of Acuity Brands and the next generation devices and applications from Sensity, our joint solution will make the IIoT more widely accessible and practical".

Acuity Brands have good first-quarter 2015 results and reached a new 52-week high during midday trading last Wednesday, March 18th. The stock traded as high as $164.88 and last traded at $163.57, with a volume of 196,861 shares traded. The stock had previously closed at $161.24.

The strategic partnership with Sensity comes hot off the heals of the firm’s acquisition of Distech Controls, an intelligent building automation and energy management company, for $252.8 million, earlier this month. Acuity Brands continued development is creating a strong proposition for investors and customers alike.

"An integrated platform that provides energy-efficient LED lighting with a sensor network to capture and transmit near real-time data will further enhance the business case for LED luminaire installations", said Vernon J. Nagel, Chairman, President and CEO, Acuity Brands, Inc. "We are delighted to be partnering with Sensity on a solution that has the promise to transform the outdoor lighting industry".

The deal is, of course, not the only partnership to address the vast opportunities in the lighting sector, with many companies jostling for position.

Earlier this week, LG Innotek and Daintree Networks announced their partnership to create embedded wireless drivers enabling lighting control of LED fixtures. The innovative technology now allows LED fixture manufacturers to create wireless-enabled LED lighting solutions for their commercial and industrial customers to seamlessly interact with wireless control solutions.

In a company statement Danny Yu, Daintree Networks CEO, said "We have developed partnerships with a number of fixture manufacturers, and we're excited to enable them to expand their customer offerings by joining forces with LG Innotek to create these embedded drivers. Ultimately it's about executing on the promise of open standards to deliver increased savings and value to building owners, operators, and occupants".

While the growth opportunities within lighting remain vast, the lighting controls market will need to gain more traction in the retrofit market, developing the business case for wireless. “If the lighting controls market is to maximize the growth opportunities that we forecast then it must increase its share of the retrofit market.

Whilst the case for retrofitting buildings with LED lighting has become very compelling it needs wireless technology in order to bring down the installation cost and improve the return on investment in much of this sector” Memoori’s recent wireless lighting controls report said.