W-DALI - a scalable lighting control solution for Sonepar

Sonepar chose W‑DALI to control outdoor lighting at its central warehouse in Örebro, enabling smarter control across a large logistics areas without installing new cabling.

Sonepar Sweden, formerly known as Elektroskandia, is part of Sonepar. Sonepar is an independent, family-owned company with global market leadership in B2B distribution of electrical products, solutions and related services including power, telecom and lighting.

The company opened a new warehouse in central Sweden in 2017 covering a huge space of over 43,500m² with an outdoor area covering an additional 74,000m².

When the site was built, DALI lighting was installed indoors but not outdoors. Exterior mast lighting was controlled only by switching power on and off.

Due to aging equipment, the facility updated its LED fixtures, but needed more advanced lighting control to implement dimming and achieve greater energy efficiency.

“We didn’t have any control wiring to the outdoor lighting, so we were just cutting the power,” explains Arto Hollanti, Service Technician at Sonepar. “With long distances between lighting masts and control points, installing new cables was not practical. The areas are simply too large.”

Doing DALI the wireless way

Using LumenRadio’s W‑DALI, Sonepar connected five 18‑metre outdoor masts to its existing DALI system wirelessly. The masts themselves are around 60 metres apart from one another. Commissioning was done once using an app, after which the system required no additional attention.

“It was a very simple installation and we could integrate it directly into our DALI network,” adds Arto. “After commissioning, we haven’t had to touch it. It just works.”

Full control and energy optimisation

Today, the outdoor lighting is fully visible in the DALI system, allowing scheduling, dimming and reduced output during nights and weekends.

“Now I see the loads in the system and can programme and control them exactly how I want,” says Arto.

This combination of LED lighting and smart control is delivering meaningful energy savings.

“All reductions matter when you’re working with high power masts. Thanks to the wireless control we now have through W-DALI, the adjustments we’ve made have resulted in an energy saving of approximately 30%.”

Arto Hollanti, Service Technician, Sonepar

Sonepar are now controlling the lighting so that it runs at 100% capacity between 16:00-23:00 and 06:00–08:00. Between 23:00 and 06:00, the lighting is dimmed to 10%. This schedule applies to weekdays (Monday–Friday). During weekends, the lighting remains at 10% from 16:00 to 08:00.

Wireless control and future expansion

“There’s a lot more we could connect and develop further using W-DALI,” concludes Arto. “For example, we’re interested in integrating motion detection for outdoor lighting to improve energy efficiency further.”

By using W‑DALI at its own facility, Sonepar is demonstrating how DALI done wirelessly enables reliable, scalable and cost‑effective lighting control covering large outdoor areas.

Since March 2026, Sonepar has been a distributor of W-DALI as well as LumenRadio’s AirGlow, W-Modbus and W-BACnet products.