For a city mayor, connected smart street lighting is one of the best choices to reduce energy waste and limit the public lighting related operational expenditure.
Energy prices have skyrocketed across Europe, and they will continue to rise. The gas, coal and oil shortages, conflicts, and other economic factors are affecting the energy prices. As a result, municipalities’ expenditure is expected to keep rising year by year.
To reduce energy consumption and save costs, we strongly encourage cities to adopt smart street lighting solution. In addition to cutting energy waste and saving costs, intelligent street lights benefit the citizens as well as the environment.
Smart Street Lights and Energy Savings
Intelligent street lights significantly save energy. Retrofitting LED luminaires with outdoor lamp controllers / street light controllers – enables the lighting operator to control and monitor public lighting remotely from a central location.
With the ability to manage streetlights from a centralized location, street lighting levels can be scheduled to dim during the off-peak late-night hours. This, in turn, saves up to 60% energy every night. This saving is over-and-above the energy savings achieved by converting a conventional lamp to LED.
Further, motion-sensor based smart street lights, which adjust illumination based on human presence, delivers up to in 80% energy savings.
Street light controllers and motion sensors also supports astronomical clock (AstroClock) based switching. This feature turns On and turns Off the streetlights based on the local time of a city. As a result, streetlights do not turn On earlier in the evening, or turn Off later in the morning. With this, between 5% to 10% energy waste can be prevented.
Smart Street Lights and Operational Cost Savings
Intelligent street lights reduce operational and maintenance costs of public lighting infrastructure.
Network-connected smart street lights collect LED luminaire health information and share this insightful data with the lighting operator / local utility. With this data, the operator can predict the life of luminaires and plan the replacements accordingly.
Intelligent street lights also send proactive notifications / alerts through the software (or email) to the operator in case of unexpected faults, alarms, or outages. Such notifications / alerts contain detailed information about the failure, which help the maintenance team to address it efficiently, effectively and timely. Local site visits also reduce, resulting in saving on fuel and vehicle costs, as well as saving the time of the maintenance crew. Furthermore, the central management software helps with digitizing the asset inventory. This in turn helps with accurate inventory management, thereby ensuring right stock at right time.
Smart streetlights help turn expensive reactive maintenance into effective pro-active maintenance
Smart Street Lights and Citizen Safety
Intelligent street lights, particularly the ones with motion sensors, boost public safety and comfort. Such motion sensor smart streetlights remain dim when no one is around and brighten up as soon as a human presence is detected. The automatic brightening of the surrounding lights increases the safety perception of road users.
Smart streetlights often also have an in-built ambient light sensor, which regulates the illumination based on the natural available light of the surroundings. This further enhances citizen safety. For instance, during a cloudy or rainy day, the streetlights automatically turn On to improve visibility.
As intelligent lighting also send automatic alerts / notifications in case of failure, the lighting operator can take corrective actions much quicker. With no streets with prolonged faulty lights, citizens feel safer.
Smart Street Lights and the Environment
Intelligent street lights clearly benefits our ecology and climate.
Networked streetlights can be dimmed as per need-basis through time-based and calendar-based schedules, and even with the use of motion sensors. With low-light levels, energy waste is minimized, and as a result, carbon emissions are curtailed.
Low light levels also result in lower light pollution, which benefits human beings and nocturnal animals as well as local flora and fauna.