Energy Management Initiatives and Increasing Focus on Total Lifecycle Costs Drives Lighting Controls Market
The worldwide lighting control system market, like nearly all other markets, has suffered a significant decline since the onset of the global recession late in 2008. In the first half of 2010, the market continued its decline, albeit at a slower pace. Currently, the downward trend in the lighting controls market is expected to continue throughout the rest of 2010. ARC's report includes the intelligent control portion of lighting control systems, and excludes non intelligent equipment such as lights, signage, and traditional ballasts.
The emergence of energy efficiency as a paramount concern for governments, consumers, and businesses alike will drive market performance in the near future and beyond. Decision makers have opened their eyes to the potential savings that can be realized by implementing an energy reduction strategy.
One aspect of building systems that was not always considered in the past is that energy efficiency, lower environmental impact, and improved employee productivity all add up to a lower total cost of ownership. However, this oversight is quickly dissipating. Intelligent control systems can monitor and optimize energy consumption, quickly send out alarms and notifications that can prevent downtime, increase comfort in employee workspaces, and record historical data to monitor trends in energy consumption. Systems that are geared towards lowering the total cost of ownership over the entire lifecycle of the building and have the ability to tie this information into the enterprise level will experience the strongest growth over the forecast period.
Increase in Retrofit Projects
As much as 75 percent of the opportunities in the lighting controls market come from existing buildings that need to be updated or retrofitted. This trend will continue in the next few years as government-funded stimulus money is used to increase the energy efficiency of existing buildings and the growing concerns in the US commercial real estate market may lead to a decrease in new building construction and an increase of owners of existing buildings who make retrofit investments to qualify for LEED points.
By providing a non-invasive, less costly, and less time-consuming solution, suppliers will be able to leverage the boom in the retrofit sector of the lighting controls market.
