U.S. firm Itron, a technology company that specializes in products and services for energy and water resource management, VINCI Energies’ Electrix and Transport Canberra and City Services (TCCS) are working to create an industrial internet of things (IIoT) network to support smart lighting and smart city and energy solutions in Canberra, Australia’s capital city.
TCCS, which manages streetlights and other critical infrastructure in Canberra, will deploy Itron’s multi-purpose network across the region, connecting streetlights on the network that will be managed by Itron’s Streetlight Vision central management software.
Itron highlighted that this project represents the largest standalone smart lighting project in Australia and the first energy performance contract in Australia and Oceania.
With the energy performance contract, Electrix — which provides electrical engineering, construction and maintenance services — will operate, maintain and upgrade the streetlight network over a seven-year period. This model will help TCCS achieve energy savings, minimize investment risk and help manage to fixed annual allocated budgets over the contract term.
Initial benefits of the IIoT network will include increased electrical safety and energy savings from energy efficient fittings, which can be tracked with metering on the lights.
In the long term, the partners said, the Canberra community will benefit from a Smart City Lab, which will be developed to test and develop additional smart city solutions such as, smart waste management, traffic monitoring, pollution sensing and other applications using the same network platform. A new digital control maintenance management system will also be delivered as part of the upgrade to offer real-time monitoring of the network to automatically detect faults such as lamp failures or cable problems.
“Itron’s open standards-based, globally proven smart city network is the ideal platform to help councils and governments like TCCS to realize its vision to transform critical city services for consumers. We are excited to work with TCCS and Electrix on this innovative project, which showcases the power of collaboration and creativity. Together, we will develop a strategic, scalable process for rolling out smart city applications under a single, unified network,” said Paul Nelsen, vice president of commercial and customer enablement for the Asia-Pacific region.
“Electrix has extensive local expertise in maintenance of electrical infrastructure, particularly street lighting. We are excited to apply our experience in collaboration with TCCS and Itron on this unique project,” said Tony Croagh, general manager for Electrix.
