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Edging towards a greener office (Image: Philips)

AS YOU walk into The Edge, Amsterdam鈥檚 greenest office building, you find all the trappings of an airy corporate edifice: the glass atrium, tastefully placed indoor trees, a gym and a vast cafe and chill-out area. But take the lift up to the open-plan office floors owned by business consultancy Deloitte, and there鈥檚 a quiet revolution taking place above your head.

The 14-storey building has become the first in the world to have LED lighting powered by a computer network, instead of mains electricity. Not only is it greener, since it reduces power consumption, it also means that the 6000 LED lights can be used for more than just illumination.

Called connected lighting, the idea comes from Philips, based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. It uses a variant of ethernet 鈥� the kind of network that connects your router to your PC 鈥� to harness unused wires in the internet cable to deliver power. The computer system can also send data to each LED, making them blink on and off. A flicker rate around 2000 times a second is imperceptible to the workers, but can be picked up by smartphone cameras. The phones then interpret the blinking as 0s and 1s, allowing the lights to beam signals to the devices.

Since each lighting unit has a unique position in the building and is coupled with an array of sensors 鈥� for motion, temperature and light levels 鈥� together they provide an indoor positioning and monitoring system. When a phone connects to the LEDs in a certain lighting unit, the network can keep track of which device is connecting at which location.

Through an app called Mapiq, workers can use this to find their way around the sprawling building and its meeting rooms, restaurants and gyms, as well as changing the lighting levels, air conditioning and temperature in their vicinity.

鈥淯sing an app, workers can find their way and change the lighting levels and temperature around them鈥�

And it鈥檚 not just useful for workers; it helps building managers save power and money. For example, when an area is empty, ventilation and lighting levels can be instantly minimised.

Deloitte has 2400 employees at The Edge, and 1100 are so far using the app. Two UK companies are thought to be considering adopting it.

Power-over-ethernet lighting is also safer to install than higher voltage systems, says Jesse Foote, a lighting analyst with Navigant Research in Boulder, Colorado.

The fact that the light units tell the network where workers are means that managers can collect data on how the building is being used. Are there areas where too many people congregate, or indeed are there underused areas that could be rented out?

For the future, Tim Sluiter property manager for Deloitte, would like to be able to offer people real-time information on their colleagues鈥� location. But he realises that is a privacy minefield that would require people to opt in to such a system. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 monitor movement in the toilets for instance,鈥� he says.

Deloitte is also showcasing a host of other green technologies at The Edge. For example, two sides of the building are covered with solar panels, providing enough energy for all the phone, laptop and electric car charging its workers need. It also uses geothermal energy from a borehole for heating and collects rainwater to flush the toilets.

Everything is connected to the internet for analytic purposes: from the coffee machines to the hand towel dispensers in the toilets. 鈥淚 think of The Edge as a computer with a roof,鈥� says Sluiter.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淥ffice of coded light鈥�