Digital Lumens Goes Beyond Lights: This Will be Powerful

Recently, Digital Lumens briefed analysts at Lux on the birth of "LightRules Power," a product offering that will move Digital Lumens (client registration required) beyond lighting systems and into building power. According to the company's press release, LightRules Power measures and monitors energy usage on any piece of equipment or system, and leverages the intelligent lighting network within a facility to integrate power consumption data from a variety of systems into LightRules energy reports. Digital Lumens uses third-party, clip-on sub-meters that gather real-time power and energy data from other circuits and systems. The company believes this is the key to giving facility managers a single, integrated view of energy use and cost by system, enabling them to make better decisions about resource optimization and utilization.

Clip-on sub-meters are novel, as they are a relatively inexpensive, non-invasive way to extract data from poorly-metered existing buildings – which is the majority of the building stock. We've profiled several companies using this type of hardware, such as Panoramic Power (client registration required), and Powerhouse Dynamics (client registration required), both players in the light commercial space. Digital Lumens admitted that its LightRules Power hardware was by a third-party, but they were mum about who was supplying it. While attending European Utility Week in Amsterdam, we met with another startup, Geo, who is also using clip-on meters in a residential application. As we called-out in our report, "Proof in Performance: Improving BEMS through M&V" (client registration required), energy use disaggregation is on the cusp of high potential. Once you have granular data, it enables savings opportunities at the building level, and even the grid level. In speaking with executives at C3 Energy, the company believes using its data analytics engine, it can save $10 per residential household and on average $10,000 for a commercial or industrial building. Gathering reliable data is the first step in the "Big Data" analytics task – and companies with interests in this space should seek out novel sensor companies in the near term, such as Gas Sensing Solutions – these will be the key to unlocking value in energy efficiency, demand response, and other services.