Date Announced: 18 Feb 2011 Atlanta - Acuity Brands (NYSE: AYI), a market leader in innovative energy-efficient lighting and control solutions, announced that it was selected to supply its ROAM® remote monitoring system for the city of Austin, Texas’ (“the City”) street lighting upgrade project. The Company’s industry-leading ROAM monitoring system combines photo-control technology with wireless monitoring and control capabilities and will be used as part of the City’s comprehensive outdoor lighting solution. By the project’s anticipated completion in 2014, the City will be able to control each of its approximately 70,000 streetlights with the click of a mouse and estimates that this comprehensive outdoor lighting solution will save more than $1,000,000 annually in combined energy and maintenance costs. The ROAM system will be installed and managed by Austin Energy, the area’s electric utility. “Through remote monitoring, we are able to precisely and proactively identify system outages, improve repair and response time, save energy, maintain safety standards, and support the City’s green initiatives,” said Gary Haydon, P.E., Power Systems Engineer at Austin Energy. “This project is another enhancement in the development of Austin Energy’s self-reporting smart grid,” continued Haydon.In August 2010, the Austin City Council approved a comprehensive streetlight monitoring solution. In the project’s first phase, ROAM wireless controllers are planned to be installed on 3,300 streetlights by the end of this summer. Austin Energy will monitor and control the streetlights using data received every hour from the wireless ROAM devices, via a web-based communication system.“As we have done with other municipalities, we are committed to providing the city of Austin with an industry-leading outdoor control solution that will uniquely lower both maintenance and energy costs and allow the City to proactively reduce outage response time,” said Terry Utterback, Acuity Brands Lighting Vice President, Outdoor Controls.The ROAM solution is being used successfully by several cities throughout the country to help municipalities increase energy efficiency and reduce operating costs. These cities include College Station, TX, Los Angeles, CA, Glendale, AZ and Anderson, IN.The City’s existing photocell products mounted on streetlights turn on and off when they sense darkness and light. The ROAM solution is a direct replacement of the old technology and enhances efficiency, improves reliability, and prolongs the life of an entire streetlight system. One of its many capabilities is that the system allows utilities to be alerted via a web-based portal as to the exact location of streetlights that remain illuminated during the day. Crews can be quickly dispatched to mitigate such problems, limiting the time fixtures burn during daylight hours. This eliminates a local utility’s reliance on residents to call the local utility to report a day burning or malfunctioning fixture.Also, set to a schedule of the customers’ choosing, the ROAM system will turn lights on or off at selected offsets from dusk and dawn. By capturing electrical data at each fixture, ROAM provides detailed energy consumption and tracking while monitoring critical electric distribution system characteristics. The system’s asset management capabilities permit information about each streetlight to be bar coded into handheld communication devices, which allows service crews to know in advance what materials to take before they arrive on the scene, improving efficiency and reducing time for restoration. Examples of this information include pole type and color, fixture type, wattage and lamp type.For more information, please visit the Acuity Brands and ROAM websites. You can also visit the Company by becoming fans of Acuity Brands and ROAM on Facebook.About Acuity BrandsAcuity Brands, Inc. is a North American market leader and one of the world’s leading providers of luminaires, lighting control systems and related products and services with fiscal year 2010 net sales of over $1.6 billion. The Company’s lighting and system control product lines include Lithonia Lighting®, Holophane®, Peerless®, Mark Architectural Lighting™, Hydrel®, American Electric Lighting®, Gotham®, Carandini®, RELOC®, Antique Street Lamps™, Tersen®, Winona Lighting®, Synergy® Lighting Controls, Sensor Switch®, Lighting Control & Design™, and ROAM®. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Acuity Brands employs approximately 6,000 associates and has operations throughout North America, Europe and Asia.About Austin EnergyAustin Energy is the nation’s 9th largest community-owned electric utility serving more than 400,000 customers and a population of almost 1 million. Austin Energy provides service within the City of Austin, Travis County, and a small portion of Williamson and Caldwell Counties.
Contact
Acuity Brands, Inc. Terry Utterback, 770-860-3441
E-mail:[email protected]
