“One thousand years ago, one of the first projects for street lighting was implemented in Cordoba, Spain. Those days, street lamps were gas-fired and public servants were going round the town and lighting them each evening”.
Since then, many things have improved. Durable and energy-conserving electrical lamps replaced gas-fired lamps, and the method of turning on and off the lights has become automatic. No doubt, street lighting is an advantage for all of us now – it allows protection and comfort during the dark hours. Though, the lighting systems put some severe problems in front of its owners and society as a whole. In this blog, we’ll analyze these challenges and propose a Smart Street Light Solution for them.
The Key Challenges:
Faulty lights
Often, there is no standard idea about how many faulty lights are in the area. The next problem is that there is no data to know which lights work or which not. There is a good possibility that a particular manufacturer is not suitable as a specific brand could be inexpensive to get but they have a high failure rate. Hence, the lack of standard data and analytics causes inconvenience.
Electricity theft
Electricity theft is a massive obstacle in many countries. There is no data on how much electricity each light consumes, or in a broader stage, also how much a phase consumes; there is no way of identifying if there is a leak somewhere in the line. However, this can address analytics and IoT based remote monitoring solutions, which will provide the government to see how much electricity is being siphoned off by illegal practices.
Unnecessary usage
For many countries, it is quite common to view street lights working even during the day. This leads to the wastage of electricity. Yet again, to know how much energy is wasted and how it can be stopped, analytics is required.
The IoT solution- Smart Street Lights
An IoT-based solution like Smart Street Lights involves a combination of connectivity and sensors. When installed on standard streetlights, these devices can detect movement that facilitates dynamic lighting and dimming. The integration of controls, sensors, and connectivity enables smart street lights to make a self-adaptive distributed system that adjusts street lighting to the road’s changing conditions. The light controller can be instructed to manage the street light in varying forms as per traffic, time, and environmental circumstances. It also provides nearby fixtures to communicate with each other. If a pedestrian or car is discovered, all surrounding lights will shine till any movement is captured.
Benefits of Smart Street Lights
Smart Parking includes low-cost sensors, real-time data, and applications that enable users to collect any data collected by the streetlights and adjust its features, such as dimming time. Smart street lights offer a broad range of capabilities that benefit cities, utility providers, and citizens. Below are some of the key benefits:
Improved maintenance
Smart Street Lights is equipped with sensors that provide Central Monitoring and reporting for individual street lights, thereby enabling more effective maintenance.
Asset management
Every street light can be checked and tracked. This helps in improving the accuracy and simplification of asset management.
Reduce Pollution
Reduction in carbon emissions plus energy saving of up to 50%, increasing to 80% with the introduction of smart control.
Emergency response
Emergency-response operators can turn on street lights to assist emergency workers in specific areas. Lights can also be flashed in order, or the color could change to show emergency evacuation ways during natural disasters.
Remote monitoring and management
Smart Street Lights gives operators visibility into street light operations (for example, how much energy each light is consuming) and control over dimming and on/off schedules, reducing the need to run lights for long periods and deploy photocells, etc.
Automatic outage detection
Smart Street Lights provides immediate outage notification, dramatically reducing the number of calls (and related costs) to the call center and cutting downtime up to 90 percent. With detailed outage information, operators can reduce truck rolls due to false alarms, pinpoint non working lamps, and fast dispatch crews to particular lights.
Wrap Up
Smart Street lighting systems develop faster than ever before and always need to produce more to the board to benefit the people, cities, and the planet. In modernizing the public lighting system, cities can opt for different smart street lighting control systems, streetlight remote control solutions, and other IoT technologies to create a connected future. These all bring advantages within and outside the range of public lighting.
If you’re interested in IoT products such as Smart Street light, then let’s get connected. We are a team of experienced engineers, developers, designers, and data scientists. Just have a look at our work to understand the projects and businesses our team has impacted. To discuss your project requirements, let us schedule a call!
