SPECIAL FEATURE
SMART LIGHTING & LIGHTING CONTROL
DOES STREET LIGHTING OFFER THE BUSINESS CASE FOR FUTURE SMART CITY DEVELOPMENT? Street lighting is one of the more mature applications for smart cities and more often seen as a test bed for future smart city applications. Many cities are replacing their legacy streetlights with smart LEDs in an effort to meet sustainability targets, reduce costs and meet new government standards, says Phil Beecher, President and CEO of Wi-SUN Alliance.
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ccording to The Northeast Group, it’s estimated that more than 280 million LED streetlights will be added over the next few years with a penetration rate of 89% by 2026*. Compared to outdated and inefficient street lighting, these new systems offer the benefits of reduced energy consumption and lower costs. According to Intelligent Energy Europe (IEE), an obsolete lighting system can account for as much as 50% of a typical city’s entire energy bill. But a big incentive for authorities is that LEDs last longer, typically in the region of 20-25 years compared to five-to-six years. This means less maintenance and ‘feet on the street’ to monitor them. However, connected street lighting can offer much more than just efficiency and cost savings. It can become the hub for future smart city development, supporting intelligent lighting systems that allow authorities to monitor and control lighting levels, such as cycle paths or walkways that light up on approach, and the ability to instantly change colour and lighting levels for bridges, monuments and other buildings.
Lighting becomes the smart hub This can become the catalyst for bigger things. The street lighting network can provide the communications infrastructure for local authorities, city developers and service providers to deploy other smart sensors and IoT devices. With the appropriate wireless mesh technology in place, like Wi-SUN Fan, the streetlight network then becomes the enabler for an entire smart city, offering connectivity for a variety of applications. Local authorities and councils can turn smart street lights into opportunities to make money – and this certainly makes the business case easier to justify.
One such example is electric vehicle (EV) charging. Over the next 10 years we will see more EVs on our streets, following government plans to end the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles as part of its 10-point plan towards becoming net zero. Deloitte estimates that in the 10 years to 2030, between £8bn and £18bn of investment in EV charging point infrastructure is needed. The government’s independent statutory advisor, the Climate Change Committee has estimated that around 280,000 charge points will be required by 2030, meaning that an average of over 30,000 charge points need to be installed each year. But just 20,000 were in place at the end of 2020. By utilising a connected lighting infrastructure already in place, EV charging just becomes part of smart city development. Using the network makes good business sense and could see more streetlights turned into convenient on-street charging points.
City of London street lighting It’s not just the potential of EV that makes good business sense. The City of London is a good example of an authority that’s using street lighting as the enabler for other applications. The business case was to replace an out-dated and inefficient lighting system to help manage rising costs, reduce energy consumption and improve citizen safety, while lighting up the city’s streets, walkways and iconic landmarks. It needed a robust and flexible communications network that could reach into the narrow lanes and between the modern high rises and historic buildings that the city is so famous for. Wi-SUN Fan wireless mesh provides the coverage to connect all of the lighting, while meeting the city’s management and control needs, such as controlling lighting levels and fault reporting through a central management system.
But the city wanted the technology to be future-proof – to meet its requirements not just today, but also in the future as part of its smart city transition. Built on open standards, the network provides flexibility to add other applications, as well as true interoperability, meaning the authority can chose between multiple vendors, integrating different applications and devices onto a single scalable network. With the street lighting initiative finished, the City of London is adding new devices onto its existing network, including sensors for traffic and air quality monitoring, as well as smart sensors on lifebelt holders along the River Thames to alert them when lifebelts have been removed. All of this is helping it build a case for further investment in smart city technology. With the network technology now available to enable authorities and city developers to integrate multiple applications (and vendors) across a single communications network, the case for connected street lighting has never been more compelling.
Connected street lighting can offer much more than just efficiency and cost savings
Wi-SUN Alliance, wi-sun.org *Global LED and Smart Street Lighting: Market Forecast (2016-2026)
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