Published on April 20th, 2020 | by Ali Dino
0The Smart Street Lighting Breakthrough
A Glimpse into the Future of Urban Areas
The Smart lighting system is something that we are already experiencing through the smart bulbs or switches we can find at Ikea or online. But what about a smart lighting system that works for entire cities?
Existing street lighting controllers use the Internet of things (IoT), a system of interrelated computing with the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.
Street lighting control systems can work for entire countries, regions and just a street without harming the environment.
The applying of street lighting controllers can tackle problems before they even occur.
So, What Are the Main Benefits of Street Management Lighting System?
The substitution of the obsolete empowering system for a new conscious use of energy brings:
- Reduction of maintenance cost
- Increased safety when driving
- Decrease in air pollution
- Cut of energy consumption
These are just some of the main benefits that this system can bring. Moreover, the additional opportunities that will follow are countless, but for now, let’s dig into these four main aspects to have a better understanding of the topic.
Reduction of Maintenance Cost
The ESP8266 microcontrollers, microdevices able to connect to link with the lighting system will permit each Lamppost, for instance, to establish a connection and send an auto-notification when there is a need for maintenance of any kind. This will increase the speed of reacting to a problem, for instance, the replacement of a broken LED. Hence, these constant updates through the network will drastically improve the liveability of the city.
Moreover, substituting the old lights with basic LED lamppost will instantly save more than 80% of the expenditure of the streetlights. In addition, the lights will be able to adjust the brightness by taking the natural light into consideration and switch on and off automatically, thus saving even more in the long-term.
Moreover, the Management blocks on the lamppost will measure the consumption of electricity and will take over the management of energy by interacting with the central server online, storing data useful to prevent a power load for example.
If for any reason the connection will be lost the server will automatically save the data and later on send it to the management block.
Increased Safety When Driving
The increase in safety in the streets is one of the crucial points of this innovation. Indeed, there are 1.35 million people dying every year as a result of a vehicle crash caused mostly by the absence of strong lights, which makes it harder for drivers to see properly at nighttime.
With the management server, every lamppost will be “patrolling” the streets in case of issues on the road and it will reach for help in case of an accident, using the internet of things (IoT),
Moreover, the device will store data regarding the energy consumption giving it the ability to generate a signal to inform the responsible of a block about a hazard, thus reacting immediately to unwanted dangers.
Decrease of Air Pollution
Have you ever thought about the dangers of the air we breathe?
Studies demonstrated that around 91% of the world’s population lives in places where the air quality levels are above the limits established by the world health organization. In other words, we constantly breathe polluted air which is responsible for the death of almost 7 million people globally every year.
How can the Smart Street Lighting System Tackle Air Pollution?
With the implementation of this new system, it will be possible to reduce the electricity costs by over 40% just by dimming the lights during daily hours. This will bring to a decrease in CO2 emissions of 670 million tons, which simply means breathing again fresh air in crowded urban areas.
Nowadays, in a world brought to his knees by the overproduction and consumption, working on a change towards a more sustainable lifestyle that is desperately needed. Hence, an improvement in old technologies might be what we need to keep the planet the beautiful place it is.
Cut of Energy Consumption
The street lighting produces over 20% of the electricity consumption of a normal city and, with the expansion of new technologies and the creation of new devices, this number is destined to increase over the years. Smart street lighting plays a key role in diminishing the electricity consumption
With the implementation of the lamp, instant control cities will be able to create schedules to diminish the lighting consumption, giving the possibility to manage the schedule of entire cities if needed.
In addition with the implement of the Elasticsearch, the part of this new technology that analyzes and displays graphically energy consumption, it will be possible to confront and filter the data collected to always improve the performances of the street lighting management system.
Conclusive Thoughts
Keeping the pace with the latest innovation in a world that is evolving at an impressive rate can be challenging, especially during the ongoing industrial revolution that we are living and that never stops to develop new and better ways of improving daily life-enhancing the performances of the object as the lamppost treated in this article, that apparently makes no difference for us but that can clearly play a key role on the safety of citizens. This article was intended to be an insight over this new concept of lighting, summarizing the key benefits for us and the environment.