A white paper from TALQ Consortium offers contractors a roadmap for doing their part to reduce the adverse effects of artificial light at night.

The white paper, “Managing Artificial Light at Night (ALAN): How Interoperable Smart Street Lighting Systems Enable More Sustainable Cities,” makes the point that for lighting systems to minimize ALAN, it’s essential that that the right light is delivered to the right place at the right time, at the scale of an entire city, over the multidecade lifetime of lighting infrastructure.

A representative for TALQ Consortium, which developed the Smart City Protocol, a global interface standard for smart city applications, said an installer such as an electrical contractor plays a key role in each area.

For example, consider the notion of the right light.

“Installers need to push back on the default, ‘whatever’s on the shelf’ 4,000K or 5,000K fixture and spec 2,700K to 3,000K,” she said.

The right light needs to be delivered to the right place through correct installation. The installer has to respect the intended aiming angle—full cutoff, no uplight above horizontal, correct mounting height and setback from property lines. There’s no extra cost here, she said; it’s pure installation discipline.

The right time facet of TALQ Consortium’s equation means installing a dimmable fixture that can have either a timing option to reduce the light level at a predetermined time (like when activity is low) or connected options to reduce or increase remotely or upload flexible timing schedules.

A huge number of “smart-ready” installations ship with a dimmable driver, for example with DALI-2/D4i drivers, that are never commissioned to dim, the representative said.

“They get installed, tested at 100% and left there—because commissioning the dimming profile takes extra time that wasn't quoted or nobody asked for it explicitly. The fixture is capable; the system was never installed or switched on,” she said. “An installer who commissions the schedule—deep dim after midnight, motion-triggered brightening, seasonal adjustment—delivers the entire ALAN benefit from a fixture that was already paid for. This is the fastest ROI conversation a contractor can have with a client.”

Finally, managing lights at city level needs fixtures to connect to a lighting control system, she said, referencing ANSI C136.41 receptacles and D4i drivers. Thus, a network is created that can be controlled from a single management system.

“Delivered this way, lighting can brighten precisely when and where a person is present and needs to see and be seen, and dim everywhere else, giving cities more usable safety, not less, alongside darker skies, healthier ecosystems and lower carbon emissions,” the representative said.