PROJECT | Mouser Electronics fuses efficiency and sustainability with PoE lighting architecture

The global electronics industry is exploding in today’s digital world. Generated data is expected to reach 181 zettabytes by 2025, and network expansion across all regions and entities is at an all-time high. It’s no wonder that one of the world’s largest distributors of electronic components is also growing.

Over the past decade, Mouser Electronics, a Berkshire Hathaway company, has increased its global footprint to 28 locations and 4,000 employees to handle over 6.8 million products from thousands of manufacturer brands — from semiconductors, memory, and data storage to sensors, connectivity, displays, and more. Now in its 60th year, Mouser is adding a 416,000-square-foot expansion to its existing 1-million-square-foot Dallas-Fort Worth distribution center. Leveraging automation to enable fast, efficient processing, picking, packaging, and shipping, the expansion will significantly enhance Mouser’s 24/7 operations.

Having achieved fast, accurate distribution, the company has turned its focus to sustainability. Its new facility features a connected Power over Ethernet (PoE) lighting system whereby a single Ethernet cable both provides low-voltage DC power and enables network communication to each lighting fixture. Supported by a DC power infrastructure that eliminates losses associated with AC-to-DC conversion, the system reduces Mouser’s carbon footprint while improving lighting control and operational costs. While Mouser is an authorized distributor for many PoE and LED lighting components, when the company decided to deploy the technology in its facility, it also relied on trusted partners to provide the optimal design strategy and components for ease of installation and maximum efficiency, cost savings, and return on investment.

Sustainability and financial gains

As an ISO 14001:2015 certified company, Mouser is committed to environmental responsibility. Its adoption of innovative technologies influenced the decision to incorporate PoE lighting into the warehouse expansion. While the distributor had already transitioned to LED lighting in other facilities, along with load-shedding strategies to reduce energy consumption, PoE lighting offered additional advantages.

“We’ve had our eye on PoE lighting for a while and have seen the technology advance to where it now delivers a faster return on investment through better efficiency, control, maintenance, and flexibility,” said Kodiak Chadwick, facilities and physical security director for Mouser. “Building a new warehouse from the ground up gave us an opportunity to take advantage of those benefits.”

The new warehouse incorporates thousands of PoE-ready lighting fixtures from H.E Williams, including more than 1,500 compact modular high-bay lighting fixtures in the main warehouse space that produce 12,000 lumens; more than 2,000 tunable strip lights in the triple-mezzanine that produce 7,200 lumens; and a combination of 2×2 troffers and recessed downlights throughout back offices and restrooms. An integrated occupancy motion and daylight sensor in each high-bay fixture optimizes energy use, while data-driven centralized control and management allow for adjusting lights and tracking energy consumption.

According to Rhiannon Jones, PE for Baird, Hampton and Brown (BHB), the engineering firm that has designed Mouser’s electrical systems for nearly two decades, the centralized control capabilities of PoE lighting improve upon those of a conventional LED lighting system. “With today’s increasingly complex lighting controls required to meet changing energy code requirements, controls for conventional LED line-voltage systems have become more difficult to install, commission, and troubleshoot. With PoE lighting, all of the control resides in software that is remarkably simple to use from any location,” she said.

In addition to controlling the lights from one centralized location via software, a PoE architecture allows fixtures to be easily and safely moved, added, and reconfigured without involving electricians. PoE lighting systems also boast greater reliability than conventional LED line-voltage systems because the fixtures receive regulated DC power directly from a switch, eliminating the need for AC drivers. AC drivers are the highest points of failure in a conventional LED fixture due to harmonic distortion and heat generation associated with AC-to-DC conversion, which places stress on equipment and reduces efficiency. As a low-voltage Class 2 technology, PoE cabling replaces bulky conventional cables and eliminates the need for conduit. The reduced material, labor, and maintenance associated with PoE lighting further lowers Mouser’s carbon footprint while cutting operational costs.

“Mouser often rearranges their warehouse space to accommodate growth and technology upgrades. Other facilities with conventional lighting require hiring an electrical contractor whenever they need to make a change,” Jones said. “Powering high-bay fixtures in a conventional system also requires larger 10 AWG wiring and conduit. The smaller Ethernet cables and no conduit of the PoE lighting system translates to less material and an even lower carbon footprint.” With smaller 18 to 23 AWG Ethernet cables and no conduit, Mouser’s new PoE lighting system uses approximately 60% less copper and 100% less steel.

In other facilities that use conventional LED lighting, Mouser also had to paint the conduit for aesthetic purposes — an additional expense. “Not having to call an electrician every time we need to move a light is a huge cost savings. Plus, the PoE lighting system is much cleaner — we can easily conceal the smaller Ethernet cables inside the ceiling I-beams,” Chadwick said. “Going with PoE lighting was ultimately the responsible choice, both sustainably and financially.”

While many PoE lighting systems connect to AC-powered PoE switches, Mouser’s new warehouse also deploys a DC power distribution infrastructure that further reduces energy, material, and labor while maintaining centralized control. The distribution system uses fault-managed power (FMP), which was adopted as Class 4 power in Article 726 of the 2023 edition of the National Electrical Code (NEC). FMP uses centrally managed transmitters and remote receivers to intelligently detect faults and stop transmission, limiting the amount of energy that can go into a fault to provide the same shock and fire safety level as Class 2 systems but with much greater power and distance capabilities. An FMP DC power distribution system eliminates the losses associated with AC-to-DC conversion, uses smaller, lightweight cables compared to conventional AC power distribution, and enables faster, safer low-voltage installation without conduit. For the Mouser warehouse, hybrid cabling that combines FMP with optical fiber converges power and data for the PoE lighting system.

“Over the past decade, it’s been exciting to see how cloud-based platforms, connected IoT devices, and advancements in wireless connectivity are changing the way the world does business,” said Chris Campbell, president and co-founder of Polarity Networks, LLC, Mouser’s low-voltage infrastructure provider. “It just makes sense for lighting to follow suit and migrate to low-voltage technology, and now with fault-managed power, it’s fascinating to see energy also become intelligent and packetized.”

A winning formula

For the PoE lighting system, electrical contractor Trico Electric teamed up with BHB to recommend a solution based on previous experience with the renowned Fort Worth Sinclair Hotel that powers and controls all lighting, window treatments, mini-refrigerators, and smart bathroom mirrors using PoE and Digital Electricity (DE), an FMP technology pioneered by VoltServer. They turned to Sinclair Digital Services, Inc., a full-service consulting, design/build, and project management firm specializing in DC power infrastructure that was founded by Sinclair Hotel owner Farukh Aslam.

“After working on the Sinclair Hotel project, I knew that PoE would be the future of lighting. When Mouser initiated the new warehouse project with a lighting system consisting of thousands of fixtures, it was the perfect fit,” Jones said. “Thankfully, there is now a much broader palette of PoE-capable fixtures to choose from. Once we determined the number, type, and location of fixtures and sensors, we turned the requirements over to Sinclair Digital to design and deliver a robust infrastructure.”

To maximize ease of installation, efficiency, and sustainability for Mouser’s PoE lighting system, Sinclair Digital designed the system using its packaged AGILE-CORE lighting and power distribution system that combines the benefits of PoE technology and FMP. A hybrid copper-fiber cable provides FMP and network connectivity from a headend location to distributed building infrastructure transmission system (BITS) enclosures, each covering 10,000 square feet. This distributed architecture reduces the amount of cable throughout the facility and eliminates the need for extensive IT closets and associated power and cooling requirements, contributing to material, labor, and energy savings.

Within each AGILE-CORE BITS enclosure, power distribution modules transfer the FMP to high-voltage DC power for powering two 24-port PoE switches that deliver up to 90W of standard-based PoE (IEEE 802.3bt Type 4) per port to lighting fixtures and occupancy sensors, as well as other PoE-enabled endpoints such as cameras and wireless access points. While occupancy sensors are often wireless, Sinclair Digital designed the system with wired sensors to eliminate any potential interference with Mouser’s automated wireless warehouse technologies.

Sinclair Digital selected Inspextor PoE nodes from MHT Technologies to provide the network control and PoE interface. The nodes receive power and data over twisted-pair Ethernet cable from the PoE switches in the BITS enclosures and provide constant current to fixtures via dual output channels and a control interface for occupancy sensors and wall switches. A total of 1,678 nodes support all LED fixtures, occupancy sensors, and wall switches throughout the warehouse, with each high-bay fixture incorporating a single node to provide 80W of power. In other areas, such as back offices and restrooms, nodes connect and power multiple lower-wattage fixtures.

“While there are other PoE lighting infrastructure solutions available, our team found the AGILE-CORE system to be the simplest to deploy from an installation perspective. Each designated zone has a BITS enclosure, and everything is plug and play from this point on,” Campbell explained. ““The efficiency, flexibility, scalability, and enhanced control with data insights are a huge benefit compared to a conventional lighting system.”

Backed by robust centralized control, the PoE lighting system allows Mouser to granularly adjust the thousands of fixtures across the facility, including customized preset dimming scenes that enable dimming lights within a zone by 25%, 50%, or 75% or brightening or dimming lights in 10% increments to cater to the illumination requirements of a specific space. It also provides Mouser with complete visibility into energy consumption, identifying further optimization opportunities to prove energy savings for increasingly stringent energy code requirements.

“The control we have over the lighting system allows us to implement load shedding for greater energy savings and makes it easy to adjust lighting levels based on specific needs,” Chadwick said. “There are many unique features that we can tap into. For example, we can turn down lights above an automated conveyer system or turn them up in areas where workers need more lighting for the task at hand.”

Increasing the profile of PoE

The success of the Mouser warehouse project, combined with ongoing advances in PoE lighting technology, helps pave the way for new opportunities among all the stakeholders.

“We are sold on the technology, and I believe we will see many more projects and applications for fault-managed power and PoE,” Jones said. “It could still be a hard sell on small projects and when dealing with developers that strictly look at initial costs rather than lifetime savings. But it boggles my mind to think about ever again doing a project the scale of Mouser’s new warehouse with the cost and complexity of line voltage LED lighting.”

Mouser plans to utilize PoE lighting for all new construction at its Dallas-Fort Worth location. Meanwhile, Sinclair Digital is expanding its AGILE-CORE system with DC power technologies that deliver more power per port and further reduce costs for PoE lighting deployments. Polarity Networks is also looking to grow in the area of PoE lighting.

“We’ve been working with Mouser since we’ve been in business, and this was our first major PoE lighting project,” said Reese Averett, executive VP and co-founder for Polarity. “It’s right up our alley — we understand it because we’re network infrastructure experts. We’re so impressed by this emerging technology that we’re making it a core part of our business.”

Digital Electricity is a trademark of VoltServer. AGILE-CORE is a trademark of Sinclair Digital Services, Inc.

LUIS SUAU is the chief business officer at Fort Worth, Texas–based Sinclair Digital Services, Inc. With more than 40 years of industry experience in digital building solutions, he oversees business and product development for this full-service consulting, design/build, and project management firm that provides products, packaged systems, and software services and specializes in sustainable and intelligent buildings with a primary focus on DC power and microgrids, building controls, and battery energy storage systems.

BETSY CONROY is an industry writer and consultant who has spent the past three decades developing quality technical content for trade publications and leading technology companies in the electrical, networking, and telecommunications industries. She is based in Watertown, Connecticut.

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