Benefits of X-PoE vs. 802.3bt
IEEE802.3bt allows up to 90W of power for PoE Loads including PoE Lighting
Signature Resistor
PoE PD Chip for Power Negotiation
High power magnets to isolate Ethernet from Power
Mac/Phy for Ethernet
Microcontroller to host logic and API for the Node and connected lights
Flash and RAM Memory
I2C, UART or SPi communication
One of more LED Driver chips
2nd Stage LED Driver circuitry
Unlocking Cost-Effective Illumination:
X-PoE Sets New Standards with Up to 120W Power per Cable, Making PoE Lighting Competitive Worldwide!
This adds up, and results in a relatively power hungry device that looses efficiency due to internal processing (up to 20% efficiency loss in many cases) and consumes relatively high power when in standby mode (1.5W/node commonly). Furthermore, a PoE Node holds the largest component cost of an entire PoE Lighting system (followed by the PoE Switch). Sales price of PoE Nodes for lights range from $150 to $400 as of August 2023.
This makes it hard to compete with a traditional $10 AC/DC LED Driver, especially outside the USA where Conduit isn’t required (conduit being the biggest savings in a US based PoE Lighting installation).
X-PoE (Extended PoE) Solves this problem by removing the need for any electronics aside for the signature resistor at the luminaire end of the PoE Cable.
Furthermore, X-PoE allows for up to 120W combined power per cat cable by using two isolated 60W pairs. X-PoE is fully backwards compatible with all IEEE PoE Standards including 802.3af/at/bt but will at certain signature resistors try to detect if an LED Diode is directly connected to the Cable wires.
If an LED Load is found, the LED can be dimmed and controlled centrally directly from the PoE switch without any PoE Node or receiver. This Makes PoE Lighting cost competitive with event he most aggressive Line voltage installations.
As an example, X-PoE Lighting solution for a 20K sqft warehouse has been demonstrated to be around $2/sqft installed or $3.5/sqft when combined with fault managed power distribution. An equivalent Line voltage installation is around $4/sqft and a state of the art PoE Lighting installation using PoE Nodes are around $5-6.
Several other benefits
X-PoE has several other benefits including longer cable runs of up to 1000ft per Luminaire vs. 300ft in traditional PoE which is limited by data and not power.