Electricity + Control April 2016

ENERGY + ENVIROFICIENCY: FOCUS ON LIGHTING

Smart lighting and beyond Smart urban networks in the Internet of Things Gianni Minetti, Paradox Engineering SA

Smart Lighting means switching to LED technologies, which would cut energy use by at least 50%. The benefits, however, could be even higher.

W orld population is growing and increasingly moving to urban areas. By 2050, about 70% of world population will live in cities and we will count around 40 megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants across the globe, most of them in emerging countries. Urban infrastructures are under severe stress, as it becomes harder to satisfy people expectations in terms of quality of life and quality of services including transportation, healthcare, education and public safety. These assumptions are at the core of the intense debate around Smart City models… how can a city become smarter in managing its own infrastructure and resources, leading the way to sustainable development in a far-sighted perspective? Street lighting is one of the domains on which many commu- nities around the globe have started to focus. It represents a major cost item in cities’ balance sheets, has a clear impact on liveability and affects environmental performance. The Smart Lighting Alliance estimates that there are about four billion street lamps in the world, with lighting representing almost 20% of global electricity consump-

tion and 6% of global carbon dioxide emissions according to the latest data from International Energy Agency. Typically, Smart Lighting means switching to LED technologies, which would cut energy use by at least 50%. However, benefits could be even higher if turning existing infrastructures into smart networks to better control energy consumption and increase lighting efficiency. A modular wireless full mesh network platform – such as PE.AMI by Paradox Engineering (from hereon referred to as the company) – is the ideal technology to put this vision into practice, as it allows cities to build a self-configuring and self-healing architecture which can easily be managed and possibly scaled over time. By connecting luminaires to an integrated network, these acquire the capability to receive and transmit data as well as execute commands, thus enabling remote monitoring and control functions. As a result, municipalities or local service providers are able to define a customised lighting pattern for single districts, streets and even single lamps, managing on/off and dimming actions accord- ing to programmed schedules (ie. combinations of time, daily solar

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