Cities and companies around the world are taking advantage of the implementation of smart lighting solutions. These innovative lighting solutions allows firms and city governments to reduce energy costs as well as to implement a wide range of new solutions.
Chicago
U.S. company Ameresco has recently announced it has contracted with the city of Chicago as part of the city’s smart street lighting project to modernize its infrastructure. Ameresco said that the project is believed to be the largest city-led wireless smart street light program in the U.S., and will connect more than 250,000 street light fixtures across Chicago.
The four-year modernization project is expected to transform Chicago’s street light system by replacing approximately 85% of the city’s existing street lights with smart LEDs.
The new smart LED street lights will be owned and operated by the city of Chicago, supported by Silver Spring Networks’ managed services and its streetlight.vision control and management system (CMS) software.
The new LED street lights are expected to consume between 50 and 75% less electricity than the city’s existing lighting infrastructure. Silver Spring’s IPv6 platform will enable Chicago to remotely dim or brighten street lights as needed, as well as to remotely monitor street lights for proactive maintenance and faster repairs if failures do occur. The smart street light infrastructure will also be integrated into Chicago’s 311 system.
Paris
A clear example of the benefits of the implementation of smart street lights can be seen in Paris. In order to reduce public lighting energy consumption, the city government had selected Silver Spring to implement project pilot including integrated smart street lighting, traffic signal controls, and an IPv6-based multi-application network to achieve immediate savings, strengthen the communications fabric and reduce risk. For this specific project, the U.S company had expanded the functionality of its smart infrastructure platform to support smart city solutions such as intelligent street lighting, traffic signal control, and electric vehicle charging, among others.
Georgia
AT&T is also working in a number of smart street lighting initiatives across the country. The telco uses GE’s IoT sensors, which are placed in the street lights and provide key information about traffic, crowds, crime, and air quality.
In January 2017, AT&T teamed with Current, powered by GE and Georgia Power, to test intelligent lighting solutions in Atlanta. The companies are using the AT&T smart cities framework as the foundation to add intelligent lighting solutions throughout the city.
The City of Atlanta and Georgia Power will be piloting Current’s new IoT sensor platform for cities and installing 1,000 wirelessly controlled LED lights.
Smart poles
Dutch firm Philips and Swedish vendor Ericsson are cooperating on telco-integrated street lighting infrastructure. With co-created Philips lightpole site, the Dutch firm provide mobile broadband connectivity through smart street lighting. The pilots, which take place in Los Angeles and San Jose, California, have taken a major step in creating a connected smart city.
“Smart poles not only serve as an important connected light source which can be remotely managed, they house technology to improve mobile network performance across the city,” Philips said.
Additionally, smart poles will enable the densification of mobile wireless operator’s networks, offering providers new possibilities to find the right site location. Because street light poles are ubiquitous in urban landscapes, mobile broadband infrastructure can be scaled beyond traditional sites, a key enabler for evolving heterogeneous networks. As a result, operators can improve data coverage and capacity for residents, visitors, and businesses, enabling an enhanced Mobile Broadband user experience.
American Eagle
American Eagle turned to GE for a large-scale smart lighting solution for its distribution center in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, in order to obtain energy and maintenance savings.
Before choosing GE, American Eagle was faced with a 14,000 fluorescent lamp installation for the factory’s pick-module alone. Because fluorescent lamps have shorter shelf life than light emitting diodes, AEO would have required a full-time maintenance employee to replace tubes. Identifying GE’s LED solutions as a lighting choice took them down the path to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver certification, while improving light output and cost savings.
After determining LED smart lighting was best for the pick-module areas, the facility management team reviewed other areas – inside the offices and warehouse space, as well as the exterior of the facility – to identify ways LEDs could help them achieve LEED certification.
The distribution center opened with 7,200 GE Albeo ALC4-Series fixtures mounted and arranged to illuminate conveyor belts and pick-module areas. These were designed to save energy by using an “on/off” dimming schedule when associates are not in factory aisles. GE’s Albeo ABV1 LED high bay fixtures were installed in a 200,000-square-foot section as part of a second phase of construction. GE provided lighting in the warehouse with T5 fluorescent tubes, Lumination ET Series recessed LED troffers and LED downlights in the building’s office space as well as some Evolve LED lights and wall packs for the parking lot and outdoors.
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