Lighting Controls Industry Quietly Leaving Lighting Industry

This LinkedIn post is reprinted with permission from Geoffrey Marlow. Special thanks to Geoffrey Marlow.

By Geoffrey Marlow, President, Marlow Advisory Group

The DesignLights Consortium’s Networked Lighting Controls Technical Requirements V5.2 took effect on August 17, 2026. On its own terms, it’s a modest update. Two additions stand out: thermostat integration, which lets occupancy data from the lighting control system influence HVAC operation, and standardized configuration reporting under ANSI/NEMA C137.9, which gives utilities a consistent way to verify how a system was actually configured. Both remain reported capabilities rather than required ones. Cybersecurity requirements didn’t change.

What makes the update worth an executive’s attention is the direction it points, particularly when you read it alongside what one of North America’s largest lighting companies has already done. Effective March 26, 2025, Acuity Brands, Inc. became Acuity Inc. Its SEC filings now open by describing the company as a “market-leading industrial technology company” using technology to solve problems in “spaces, light, and more things to come.” Acuity still owns an enormous lighting business. It didn’t abandon lighting. But it deliberately stopped defining itself by lighting alone.

Read that next to V5.2, and the controls update gets more interesting. Lighting controls spent twenty years trying to become part of the lighting sale. Their future increasingly depends on becoming part of the building sale. The question for the lighting channel is how much of that value it intends to follow.

Lighting controls spent twenty years trying to get into the lighting sale. Their future depends on getting into the building sale.

What V5.2 Actually Changes

The DLC’s own research explains some of the logic behind the move. Earlier studies have consistently shown that networked lighting controls can produce meaningful lighting-energy savings, including in LED-to-LED upgrades. That opportunity remains. But in many mature LED markets, the next meaningful increment of savings may no longer come from the fixture alone — and V5.2 explicitly points toward HVAC.

The new requirements recognize systems capable of passing occupancy information to thermostats. That matters most in small and midsize commercial buildings that have programmable or smart thermostats but no full building automation system. Early results from the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, cited in reporting on the DLC update, suggest that occupancy information from luminaire-level lighting controls can reduce cooling energy by as much as 11 percent and heating energy by as much as 21 percent in a well-maintained building. The DLC has described the broader working range for HVAC savings at approximately 8 to 21 percent.

The incentive infrastructure around networked lighting controls is already substantial. As of the V5.2 update, the Qualified Products List contained 96 NLC systems from 61 manufacturers, and the DLC said more than 100 utilities were using the QPL to determine incentive eligibility. More than 200 commercial lighting rebate programs are offering dedicated NLC incentives in 2026, according to BriteSwitch data reported by Lighting Controls Academy. The DLC says NLC incentives are available in 46 states and three Canadian provinces, with QPL listing required for eligibility in 31 of those markets.

Thermostat integration remains optional. But once utilities can measure additional HVAC savings from infrastructure already being installed as part of a lighting project, optional can become economically important fast.

Once a utility can measure HVAC savings from a sensor it already paid for, optional doesn’t stay optional for long.

Why Now, When the Ceiling Was Promised in 2010?

Experienced readers have heard the sensor-grid argument before. Enlighted was founded on the idea that sensors distributed through the lighting system could provide building-level intelligence. When Siemens acquired the company in 2018, the pitch included dense sensing capable of supporting lighting, HVAC, and broader building-management applications. It was hardly alone. Variations of that story were told across the industry for more than a decade, and for most of that time the lighting channel didn’t fundamentally change.

A few things are different now. Penetration is one of them. Only 4 percent of linear luminaires sold through Rhode Island Energy’s midstream program included luminaire-level lighting controls in 2022. In 2026, 75% do. That shouldn’t be mistaken for national penetration, but it shows what happens when product availability, incentives, and channel execution line up.

Verification matters too. C137.9 gives the market a standardized way to report how a controls system has actually been configured. Utilities are far more comfortable paying for savings they can document than for theoretical capability sitting unused in the ceiling.

And perhaps most importantly, the economics are changing. In 2010, the sensor grid was often a platform in search of a payer. In 2026, efficiency programs are increasingly paying for networked controls, and the DLC is building a framework for connecting that installed infrastructure to HVAC savings.

What the lighting system brings to that conversation is density. A luminaire-level system can place networked occupancy sensing throughout a building at a resolution that conventional zone-level HVAC controls typically don’t match. That creates information with potential value beyond illumination, and that’s where the commercial question gets more interesting. Illumination is priced on a multiplier, quoted through the channel, and defended against the spec flip at buyout. The occupancy information sitting above the ceiling isn’t priced into the traditional lighting-channel commission structure at all. If that information starts influencing HVAC schedules, space utilization, building operations, or other services, the value is no longer confined to the fixture transaction.

Who gets paid for the rest?

 In 2010 the sensor grid was a platform in search of a payer. In 2026, the payer is the efficiency program, and it has written down what it will pay for.

Who Owns the Controls Conversation?

There’s no single answer. Depending on the building and the project, the lighting rep, electrical contractor, distributor, BAS contractor, mechanical contractor, or systems integrator can all plausibly own part of the controls scope. The industry’s own guidance reflects that fragmentation: startup, programming, integration, commissioning, and acceptance responsibilities can move among parties depending on how the project is written and purchased. The problem isn’t that multiple parties are involved. The problem is what happens when everyone is involved, and nobody clearly owns the outcome.

A 2017 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory study for the U.S. Department of Energy looked at controls performance in two dozen newly built commercial buildings in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain regions, and separately interviewed ten experienced commissioning agents. Six of those ten said energy-code compliance verification wasn’t part of their scope. The study also documented shortcomings in design documentation, configuration, and execution of required control sequences.

It went a step further and put a rough price on the gap: by the report’s own estimate, lost energy cost savings from controls that were installed but not configured as designed averaged $12,025 per building per year on the HVAC measures and $570 per building per year on the lighting measures. The study is nearly a decade old, and its sample shouldn’t be used to estimate today’s failure rate. What remains relevant is the failure mechanism, and where the money sits when it fails. The equipment may be installed correctly, and the intended sequence may be in the design documents, yet the building can still fail to deliver the intended outcome if nobody clearly owns the last mile from installation to operation…

Read the rest of the post here.

Image above courtesy of Geoffrey Marlow.

About The Author:

Geoff Marlow is President of Marlow Advisory Group, bringing the perspective of a senior leader, founder, and successful exit entrepreneur. He provides strategic consulting, leadership training, and public-speaking services, advising manufacturers on market strategy, operational transformation, and competitive positioning.

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