The Lighting Network of a Utility provides a number of important benefits. It is used to promote security in urban areas and in general, and to increase the quality of life by artificially extending the hours in which it is light so that activity can take place. Street lighting also improves safety for drivers, riders, and pedestrians . Driving outside of daylight hours is more dangerous as pedestrians and vulnerable road users suffer from decreased visibility in the dark. LED light fixtures offer significantly greater energy efficiency and a long, predictable lifetime (e.g., two to four times the life of a traditional high-pressure sodium streetlight). Based on that information, it’s easy to think that if you upgrade your lights to LEDs, you won’t have to touch them for 10-15 years. The reality is, however, that even in a city full of newly installed LED streetlights, 10% of the lights may require maintenance on an annual basis. Some common issues that require maintenance of LED lights are: • Electrical problems – power surges, improper wiring, manufacturing defects, bad photocells • Environmental damage – lightning strikes, hurricanes, tornado’s, floods • People-related damage – vandalism, theft, tampering, vehicles running into poles etc. • Citizen complaints - about the color and intensity of the LED’s light which may require action to block the light that is emitted Without a lighting management system in place, detecting & addressing these issues can be costly & troublesome . Issues can only be identified through proactive day and night patrols or by citizen complaints. These methods do not identify issues quickly, cause public safety issues due to improperly lit streets, increase costs significantly, and are frustrating for everyone involved. Once an issue is identified, the lack of a lighting management system usually means that there is little information available about the equipment that needs to be maintained. Even determining the location of the streetlight requiring repair is often an issue and maintenance crews can spend valuable time “fixing” the wrong streetlight. The result is that more resources on average are required to inspect, diagnose, and fix a standard streetlight issue, which increases the cost of the repair and the length of time that residents live with improper and possibly unsafe lighting. The lighting management system brings every city even more energy and cost savings and can shorten the payback period of the project. In addition, a lighting management system can significantly improve the quality of lighting services, improve public safety, and provide a foundation for additional Smart City improvements and Citizen Benefits. LED Smart lighting and communication networks + an intelligent lighting management system are transforming street and area lighting. Therefore, municipality lighting networks are becoming the platform for a wide variety of smart city innovations. The vision of the city lighting network as a smart city platform is the next frontier for street and area lighting. Falling costs and improvements in quality are making LED lighting the default option as cities replace and upgrade existing lighting systems. LEDs can reduce energy consumption for street and area lighting with energy savings up to 70%, and maintenance cost savings between 50-70%. Installing LED lighting is only the first step, upgrading street and area lights also provide an excellent opportunity to install a lighting control & monitoring network. The IoT Network offers municipalities an opportunity to deploy a range of solutions that can save money, keep residents safe, improve sustainability, and attract new people and businesses. By focussing on intelligent asset management, protecting, control and monitoring infrastructure assets, and with the proper response to criminal and technical alert/alarms you can combat theft, vandalism, and tampering. The system is also an asset management system utilised to control and monitor energy consumption for further revenue savings. Connecting street and area lights together in a computer-controlled & monitored network opens the door to a wide range of innovative capabilities that save energy and improve the performance of the lighting system. Beyond those applications lie the broader possibilities for deploying non-lighting solutions on the lighting network, making it a ubiquitous platform for smart city applications. Enabling a connected network at the same time as upgrading to LED lighting also reduces overall costs and removes the need for a second installation program. Smart LED lights are public lighting fixture that incorporates technology, such as light-sensing photocells, sensors, light controllers to introduce real-time monitoring & controlling functionalities. Smart street and area lights transform the way Municipalities & Utilities manage cities while delivering enormous savings. Street and area lighting can account for nearly 30-40 percent of many cities’ total energy costs. Local governments and utility providers are seeking alternative ways to decrease energy usage and reduce costs. Replacing traditional HPS (High-Pressure Sodium with Smart LED luminaires can help achieve that goal by delivering immediate savings through reduced energy use. Installing smart LEDs can generate an additional 10 to 20 percent savings by adjusting output to ambient light levels, dimming, or brightening as needed, or set to turn on only by motion detection, and then dim or turn off after a specific amount of time when there is no motion detected or through a user-determined software program.

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