Moderating the consumption of energy is essential in achieving overall emissions reduction targets. Organizations and businesses across all sectors are examining operational energy usage in detail but, in an ever-changing environment, this is challenging. Here we look at the trends affecting efforts to reduce energy consumption in the security sector.
We’re all more conscious than ever about how our energy usage impacts efforts to reduce CO2 emissions and mitigate climate change. This is as true for businesses as individuals, particularly for those, like Axis, which have signed the UN Global Compact.
Increasingly, initiatives make demands not only of the organization signing, but across its entire upstream and downstream value chain. The broadening of the scope is welcome in helping to more rapidly create a positive impact, but the desire to change can also be affected by external factors.
We see three key trends that are having an impact on efforts to make a positive change and, within them, some additional opportunities.
Trend 1: The increased use of renewable energy in security solutions
Broadly speaking, the increased use of renewable energy sources is central to goals to reduce global emissions. While it takes time to transition an entire power grid to renewable energy, we’re increasingly seeing renewable energy, particularly solar, being employed in specific security solution use cases, along with other energy saving measures.
The first of these is the growth in the installation of solar-powered “smart poles” in urban environments. While these can feature a host of functions, from integrated surveillance cameras to intercoms to call for assistance, from charging points to environmental sensors, their primary function is traditional: lighting areas in hours of darkness to improve safety and security.
During the energy crisis of 2022, many city authorities put “lighting curfews” in place to save electricity, where streetlights would be turned off after a certain time. While this measure might have helped meet the goal of saving energy, it is easy to see how it could also create issues in safety and security.
The lighting in smart poles solves this issue. Lighting can be dimmed when the surrounding area is empty of people, reducing the load on the energy grid or batteries, with lighting turning on or brightening when sensors detect people approaching.
Temporary and mobile security solutions are also making use of renewable energy. Typically mounted on trailers or container-based, these are ideal for environments where typical power and network infrastructure is unavailable.
Examples might be at a music festival or construction project, or in remote locations such as mining operations, or oil and gas exploration. In these locations, renewable energy can power advanced security solutions, taking advantage of every camera type, network audio, and analytic capabilities.
Even when using renewable energy, however, it’s essential that power is consumed as efficiently as possible. Every watt saved will extend the life of the battery charge.
Power profiles and low power modes allow for configuration to reduce power saving without compromising solution performance. For example, in locations where temperatures aren’t too extreme, in-camera heaters can be deactivated to save energy. The historic power chart for a device can also be reviewed over time, allowing configuration to be tweaked and optimized.
Cameras using adaptive IR-LED illumination allow for high-quality video surveillance in areas with low levels of light. This means that scenes do not need to be fully illuminated all of the time. Lighting can be dimmed when there is no activity, only being brightened when movement is detected, and full visibility required.
Trend 2: The growth in artificial intelligence (AI)
Nobody can be unaware of the huge growth in AI over recent years. Many will also know that huge amounts of energy are required for AI processing, which is typically provided by a growing number of data centers around the world. And not only do the compute requirements themselves create a huge demand for energy, there are also knock-on impacts, such as the energy needed to cool thousands of servers within the data centers.
It's essential, therefore, to measure, examine, and optimize every aspect of energy consumption in the provision of AI.
One trend which can help mitigate the energy consumption of AI data centers and on premise server rooms is balancing the use of servers for AI processing with more AI compute at the edge of the network, within devices themselves. It’s a case of employing AI where it delivers most benefit, in the most power efficient way.
Typically, edge AI consumes less power than processing on a server. This is particularly the case when using processors specifically designed for the purpose of analyzing data from a visual sensor, rather than using a generic AI chip in a server. The latter is rather like using a hammer to crack a nut.
In addition, with processing and some analytics taking place within cameras themselves, the amount of data being sent across the network is significantly reduced. In turn this reduces bandwidth and storage requirements, resulting in additional energy savings. Logically, when more processing takes place on the edge, there’s also an associated reduction in the need for power-hungry server-based analytics.
Trend 3: Growing demand in uncertain global energy market
The energy crisis of 2022 heightened awareness of how sensitive the provision of energy is to political and economic factors. More recently, as described above, we’ve become very aware of how technology can also have a big impact on global demand for energy.
The world’s appetite for energy is increasing, while its supply is less certain than ever. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that global energy demand will increase at a faster rate between 2023 and 2026 than it did in the previous years.
And while the IEA also predicts that the share of renewable energy is forecast to rise from 30% of overall electricity generation in 2023 to 37% in 2026, this disguises the fact that with overall demand increasing so much, the absolute amount of fossil-based energy will also increase.
In summary, we currently live in a world where the demand for energy is increasing, its supply is less stable, and the transition to renewable energy is moving more slowly than we would like.
And even as renewable energy becomes a greater part of the global production of electricity, we shouldn’t become complacent: energy efficiency is a positive thing, even in a renewable world.
It’s therefore imperative that we as individuals and businesses still push forward with all possible initiatives to reduce energy consumption and emissions.
It’s in our DNA to be ahead of the curve on issues related to sustainability. We moved to remove toxic plastics from its products well ahead of regulation demanding it, and it’s the same with improving energy efficiency in our products.
