Outdoor Lighting Controls: The Facility Manager’s Secret Weapon

For higher education facility managers, the mission for outdoor lighting is clear: keep the campus safe, well-lit, and welcoming – all while managing budgets, energy costs, maintenance demands, and sustainability goals. It's a challenge that requires visibility, control, and ideally – intelligence.

Ubicquia’s Streetlight Solution transforms outdoor lights into smart, connected assets that actively support safety and efficiency.

From Chasing Outages to Staying Ahead of Them

On most campuses, lighting outages are too often discovered the hard way: student complaints, security reports, or time-consuming night patrols. By the time the issue is identified, visibility and safety have already been compromised.

With intelligent lighting controls, that reactive cycle disappears. Ubicquia’s UbiCell® Lighting Control, each fixture continuously reports its status – alerting teams to outages, wiring issues, voltage irregularities, and equipment degradation in real time. Because every asset is digitally mapped, crews know exactly where to go and what to fix. No guesswork, no wasted truck rolls.

Even more powerful, predictive insights help identify issues before a failure occurs. Instead of responding to dark spots, facility teams can plan maintenance proactively to reduce emergency repairs, overtime, and long-term replacement costs. The result: fewer disruptions and more time focused on strategic improvements instead of chasing outages.

Lower Energy Use Without Compromising Safety

Outdoor lighting operates for long hours, making it one of the largest contributors to campus energy spend. But cutting costs can't come at the expense of safety. Intelligent controls make it possible to do both.

Ubicquia’s Streetlight Solution allows campuses to dynamically adjust lighting based on real-world conditions. For example, fixtures can be programmed to dim brighten during peak traffic events, like fans returning to their dorms or cars after a football game.

The switch to LEDs plus smart controls can reduce outdoor lighting energy consumption by up to 65%, delivering long-term savings while extending fixture life.

Supporting Dark Sky, Sustainability, and Student Well-Being

Light pollution is more than an environmental concern. Over-illumination affects wildlife, neighboring communities, and even student health – especially near residence halls where excessive lighting can disrupt sleep.

Ubicquia’s Streetlight Solution enables precise compliance with Dark Sky and environmental guidelines. Lights can be zoned, dimmed, and directed exactly where they’re needed to reduce glare, minimize spillover, and preserve the night sky without impacting safety.

Through the UbiVu® Asset Management Platform, campuses gain access to detailed reporting on energy use, system performance, and environmental impact – making it easy to track progress, support sustainability initiatives, and communicate results to leadership and stakeholders.

Lighting That Responds When It Matters Most

Intelligent lighting ensures that critical areas are illuminated when they should be, outages are addressed quickly, and teams can adapt lighting instantly for special events or emergencies. Authorized users can adjust lighting remotely – from a phone, tablet, or computer – without manual overrides or delays.

For campuses looking to expand situational awareness, UbiHub® enables the deployment of cameras and other edge technologies on existing streetlight infrastructure, helping lighting play a central role in a broader, coordinated safety strategy.

What This Means for You and Your Team

When outdoor lighting becomes intelligent, the benefits are felt across operations, budgets, and campus life:

• Proactive over reactive: Automated alerts and predictive insights help you stay ahead of problems instead of reacting to them.
• Savings: Reduced labor, fewer truck rolls, longer asset life, and meaningful energy savings add up quickly.
• Sustainability: Smarter scheduling, dimming, and daylight awareness reduce energy use and light pollution while supporting sustainability and Dark Sky goals.
• Safety: Reliable, responsive lighting ensures visibility where and when it’s needed—enhancing safety and confidence across campus.