Electricity + Control April 2016

ENERGY + ENVIROFICIENCY: FOCUS ON LIGHTING

By 2017, about 9 000 street lights will be replaced with LED luminaires and connected to a wireless network to allow remote monitoring and control. The infrastructure will cover four different locations: Boeng Kak Lake area and Japan Kizuna Bridge area in Phnom Penh City, Siem Reap City and Angkor Wat ruins area. According to the feasibility study conducted by Minebea at the end of March 2015, this project would reduce CO 2 emissions of 3 590 tCO 2 /year and strongly tear down energy consumption, therefore representing a great contribution to Cambodia’s financial and environmental goals.

A similar Smart City transformation is under way in Switzerland’s Bellinzona, capital of Ticino canton with more than 18 thousand inhabitants. The smart evolution started in 2013 from its public lighting infra- structure: about 600 mercury vapour lamps have been replaced with LED-based devices so far, and 900 more will be substituted by the end of 2016 to further reduce light pollution, achieve greater cost-savings and offer a greater quality of life to citizens. Having implemented PE.AMI as remote management and control plat- form, local utility AMB managed to better calibrate lighting intensity and reduce it by 50% in selected streets. Without impacting quality of services, this enabled the City to significantly cut energy consumption and spending. The project also involves a Smart Metering pilot initiative, using the same PE.AMI platform to control a portion of the power distribution network and a set of electrical meters, and an ambitious FTTH – Fibre To The Home plan, aiming at bringing optical fibre to all homes in Bellinzona and surroundings. Phnom Penh City, Cambodia In the Kingdom of Cambodia, demand for construction and improve- ment of infrastructures has been showing a marked increase due to the rapid economic growth, while the price of electricity is among the highest in ASEAN countries due to the dependence on the electricity imports. Public lighting was identified as one of the key infrastructures to be optimized, and the Japanese multinational company Minebea committed to a high-efficiency LED Street Lighting project in close collaboration with the author’s company and Iwasaki Electric.

• Streetlighting represents a major cost item in cities’ balance sheets. • There are approximately four billion street lamps in the world. • Streetlighting constitutes 20% of global electricity consumption and 6% of global carbon dioxide emis- sions.

take note

Gianni Minetti is President and CEO of Paradox Engineering SA. Before founding the Company in 2005, he worked as director of information systems in international corporations and as a consultant in project management, leadership, and software engineering methodologies. He holds a MSc in Computer Science at Università degli Studi in Milan (Italy) and has a Mas- ter’s degree in Program and Project Management from University of British Columbia (Canada). Enquiries: Email info@pdxeng.ch

April ‘16 Electricity+Control

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