Smart Lighting
Smart street lighting describes the connection of street lights in public spaces, both within urban and rural infrastructure. This application is often mentioned in the context of smart cities. The connection of luminaires in general is known under the term Smart Lighting. The lamp is able to react to changes in the environment or to be actively controlled by people.
Already today, many lanterns are using the latest LED technology, so that the lighting consumes less energy overall. The concept of intelligent street lighting also provides further savings potential, so that the energy can be used wisely and the overall consumption can be reduced. With conventional street lights, all areas are illuminated at night, even when no pedestrians or cyclists are on the road. At the same time, this fosters so-called light pollution, according to which artificial lighting has a negative impact on the environment because other living creatures could be disturbed in their natural rhythm.
With IoT, street lighting can be managed more efficiently
The Internet of Things also opens up new ways and possibilities in the area of intelligent street lighting, how lighting can be reasonably controlled as needed. Among other things, this can reduce the costs for energy and maintenance.
In order for a streetlight to be able to communicate with lamp posts nearby or with other systems, it is equipped with appropriate hardware. For example, a SIM card is installed in the hardware so that the lantern can send signals via the secure mobile radio network. Especially in the context of Smart City, the applications often run on the basis of Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT), a mobile network that is specially designed for machine communication. The network is particularly suitable for communicating small amounts of data.
Smart street lighting enables
Reduction of costs: Savings in energy and maintenance costs through targeted management of street lighting
Increase of safety: Adaptation of lighting intensity to external environmental influences (e.g. weather conditions).
Protection of the environment: reduction of light pollution and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions
Modernisation of urban infrastructure: linking with other smart city applications
Smart Lighting solutions
Introduction of a central light management system
By connecting street lanterns, entire streets can be mapped in a central light management system. The data of each individual lantern flows into the system so that the illumination in the entire city can be visualised and monitored at a central point. Not only can individual lanterns be controlled remotely, but service staff can also be sent out when maintenance work is needed. Time-consuming inspection trips can thus be avoided.
Controlling lighting intensity need-based
Intelligent street lanterns offer the possibility of controlling the lighting intensity as needed. With the help of an integrated sensor, movements in the surroundings can be detected so that the lighting intensity can be increased to 100% for a short period of time. If there is no person in the immediate surroundings, the lighting can be switched off completely or dimmed to 20%. In this way, safety continues to be ensured while additional energy is saved and light pollution is minimised.
Starting Point for further Smart City Applications
In addition to their actual function of lighting the surroundings, street lamps can take on further functions within the framework of a smart city concept. For example, the lamppost can take on additional functions by acting as a WLAN hotspot, by integrating a charging station for electric vehicles or by providing an emergency call function in case of danger. The intelligent street light thus serves as a pivotal point for connecting different smart city concepts (as smart parking) with each other.
1NCE delivers all you need to connect your smart lighting solution
In addition to hardware and software, you need a connectivity component to connect your smart lighting solution so that the data collected by your hardware can be reliably transmitted to your software. We offer the optimal solution for this with the 1NCE IoT Lifetime Flat.
Reliable IoT connectivity based on mobile communications: Our IoT SIM operates in over 100 countries on all available cellular standards (2G, 3G, 4G, LTE-M, NB-IoT)
Easy handling through plug and play: Insert IoT SIM card and connect your devices directly
Scaling through cost efficiency: The 1NCE IoT Lifetime Flat costs you EUR 10 once for connecting your devices for a period of up to 10 years
