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Smart Street Lights Shine on Further Advancements in Lighting Innovation
Smart street lighting is growing as a platform for smart city applications, and cities are increasingly seeing the benefits of smart street lighting deployment. The rise of LEDs, in large part due to their increased energy savings, longer life, and declining prices, has launched the connected street lighting market. Companies are working together to help drive innovation and continue the momentum of smart street lighting and smart city adoption.
Driving Innovation
Even with the benefits of LEDs and increased control and data available through a smart street lighting system, there are still hurdles to overcome for widespread adoption. The Smart Cities Council, a global consortium of smart city experts and companies, is working to promote sustainable smart cities that provide clean and healthy living conditions and high quality jobs. The Smart Cities Council has more than 120 members and is continually expanding its presence. In May, Telensa, a specialist in connected street lighting, joined the Smart Cities Council as a North America Lead Partner. The company will work toward the goals of the organization of advancing the development of smart cities. Lead Partners, along with Global Lead Partners, provide financial support and help guide the Smart Cities Council’s actions either regionally or globally, based on partnership level. Global Lead Partners include Cisco, Hitachi, IBM, Microsoft, Schneider Electric, Current, powered by GE, Itron, Sensus, Qualcomm, and SAS Institute, among others.
Providing a Smart City through Lighting
Several cities have started to invest in smart street lighting, which are further advanced than LEDs and have the benefits of increased control and artificial intelligence. The city of Spokane, Washington is one of the latest cities to deploy smart street lights. It is using vision control traffic-adaptive LED street lights with artificial intelligence from Echelon—a developer of open standards control networking platform for lighting and building management. Echelon’s lighting platform transmits traffic information to help reduce response time and improve reliability. Each unit, deployed on traffic intersection street lights, will determine light levels based on traffic volume and reduce or increase light levels accordingly.
Lighting and technology vendors are working to advance their offerings to create a smart street lighting platform that can be utilized as the foundation for a smart city. Though many offerings are currently available on the market, further advancement and price declines will help with continued adoption of smart street lighting systems. Partnerships between lighting and technology providers and utilities, as well as organizations such as the Smart Cities Council, are continuing to advance smart street lighting. This relatively young industry is worth monitoring as it continues to experience growth.