Customer
A top college prep all-boy boarding school in Connecticut, Avon Old Farms School was founded in 1927 and houses 400 students. The 860-acre site is nestled in the picturesque Farmington Valley, 20 minutes from Hartford. The top boys boarding school in the Northeast, it is a beautiful, self-contained community close to three major cities.
Partner
Sun Mountain Labs is a technology business located in Colorado that is simplifying advanced wireless control systems with its products and services. Their outdoor lighting control solution is a fully internet-enabled smart lighting system that is simple enough to fully install in less than a day.
Situation
Avon School had originally installed photo controls from Sunrise Technologies (Sun-Tech) for automatic on/off of the campus lights, based on sunrise/sunset. But to decrease their energy use and improve their cost savings as part of their campus-wide sustainability program, they wanted to install a smart lighting system to give them better control over on/off and dimming schedules. They also wanted an on-premise solution instead of a cloud-based one. Avon approached Sun-Tech reseller Sun Mountain Labs who recommended Dhyan’s LightMan Central Management System (CMS) which already had support for Sun Mountain Labs gateways.
Challenges
As the end customer would be installing the software themselves, the process needed to be smooth and effectively plug-and-play. Due to the 2020 pandemic situation, any kind of onsite support was impossible, and the customer wanted the solution as soon as possible. Due to the simplicity of LightMan software and Dhyan team’s well-planned installation and commissioning process, the customer was able to set up the LightMan software themselves on the first try.
By the numbers
Time taken to auto provision all the
smart LED lights
Campus lights managed
Onsite visits
Dhyan's value add
LightMan’s auto-provisioning feature enables rapid discovery and addition of lights, ensuring that the entire setup takes much less time than manual provisioning of each light. The Sun-Tech WALI controllers do not have astronomical calendar support, but LightMan’s intelligent scheduler engine automatically takes care of accurate sunrise and sunset times at Avon’s precise geo-location. LightMan also pushes customized dimming schedules to the controllers every day, allowing precise control over energy savings.
In addition, the controller devices do not have metering support, so they don’t report actual consumption. LightMan’s Analytics feature provides built-in handling for these kinds of device limitations through which the burn hours can be calculated and consumption statistics displayed, so the customer can adjust the lighting configuration accurately to achieve better savings. This also helps in identifying potential light failures.
Avon needed an easy-to-use central management system which could be used by non-technical people. We recommended Dhyan’s LightMan and it worked out well for Avon. More accuracy and control over on/off and dimming schedules, plus greater insight into the status of every light on campus, right from the desktop. It will definitely help them to reduce their energy consumption and enhance the savings from the system.”
Matt Smith,
Founder, Sun Mountain Labs
Results
Sun Mountain Labs was able to deliver the project to Avon Old Farms School as promised, on schedule, and with a great user experience. Dhyan provided full support for integration with Sunrise Technologies WALI controllers and Sun Mountain’s gateways, and Dhyan was able to provision all the nodes and gateways remotely, without individual setup or onsite visits, making the implementation quick and smooth.
Lightman’s on-premise version was easy enough for Avon to set up and install themselves, and its rich feature set and fine-grained control ensures that they can extract the maximum savings out of their smart lighting system.