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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SMARTUNNEL (The longest-life & energy-saving emergency LED lighting system for underground infrastructures)

Teaser

Summary

Emergency lighting systems are an integral part of every tunnel construction project to ensure safe evacuation of persons in a power outage as well as safe working conditions for the repair team.
Current power supply circuits force emergency lights to remain on for unnecessarily long hours when not needed during the tunnel construction. When power is turned off manually, existing circuits keep emergency lights on, powered by batteries subject to depletion (< 3 hours). This leads not only to needless energy consumption, increasing operation costs, but also to fast deterioration of the batteries due to frequent exhaustion/recharging cycles: batteries must thus be replaced every 1-2 years.
Alternatively, a supplementary cable is by-passed the main switch and maintains the emergency light on 24/24. This solution increases energy consumption and use of material/electricity cables.
At Uni-light LED AB, we have developed Smartunnel, a new smart LED emergency lighting for tunnels under construction / refurbishment, which turns off when light is not needed. Our SmartSwitch and intelligent control allow discrimination between unintentional power outage and intentional interruption, so that emergency lights are lit only under the first scenario. This prevents excessive battery exhaustion / recharging cycles thus making Smartunnel the longest-life emergency lighting system on the market. In addition, the patented driver technology allows dimming of all lights at the switch, without any supplementary control cable connections to the lights allowing further lowered energy consumption.

Work performed

We identified the main areas for optimization, which include the batteries, Smartswitch, Smartunnel segmentation, technical specifications of our emergency lighting lights, dimming operation and casing.
We also identified the applicable principles, standards and regulations at the international and European level. We planned a detailed work plan and identified the major risks with mitigation and contingency plans. We identified the potential market for Smartunnel and established a commercial plan, building a dissemination and communication plan to raise the awareness amongst every potential customer. We studied our competition landscape in the emergency lighting sector and our freedom to operate analysis validated that our technology does not infringe any existing patent. There is also a fair possibility that our SmartSwitch and intelligent control inventions can be successfully patented. We have forecasted our overall costs related to the production, the commercialization of Smartunnel and built the best revenue model. In a conservative scenario, we aim for a stable profit margin over the first 4 years of commercialization.

Final results

Smartunnel is the longest-life LED emergency lighting system on the market and the most efficient LED lighting installation solution for the tunnel construction phase. It combines our Smart Switch and Intelligent Control technology to increase the life duration of emergency light batteries by 80% (from 2 to 10 years) with respect to competitors. Thanks to its built-in motion sensors and auto-dimming capabilities, it also reduces energy consumption of permanent lighting. Overall, it reduces the installation and operation costs by 23% with respect to other self-contained emergency light solutions. The impact includes:
- x5 life duration of emergency light batteries (from 2 to 10 years) thanks to our Smart Switch and Intelligent Control technology. 80% reduction in battery waste and environmental impact of batteries production, collection and recycling.
- 20-30% lower energy consumption of permanent lighting thanks to motion sensing and dimming.
- Reduced installation costs thanks to â€œplug and playâ€ design.
- Emergency lights can be installed in series with standard lights. No need for centralized supply.
- Unique centralised dimming, reducing costs and failures: we are the only company that can add dimming in a very simple way without adding any cables. The dimming procedure for our lights, thanks to our patent, requires only one dimmer over the entire circuit, installed next to the switch. We lower the power over the circuit. Others need an extra cable (0-10V) to each light (and driver) to create the same dimming.
- 23% overall cost reduction: installation, operation and maintenance