Phil Beecher, CEO and President, Wi-SUN Alliance looks at how smart streetlighting can help overcome urban challenges.
Figures from the UN show that the number of people living in cities multiplied roughly 5.6 times between 1950 and 2018, and that 68% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. This gradual shift in the human population from rural to urban area combined with overall population growth could add another 2.5bn people to urban areas by 2050.
This mass influx of people into our cities is creating a host of new challenges. From the amount of traffic on our roads, rising carbon emissions and poor air quality, to increasingly hard-to-manage urban waste and a growing strain on utilities, huge stresses are being placed on critical infrastructure and city services that simply were not designed to cater to such large volumes of people.
Between highways and pedestrianised streets, many of the urban environments that we frequent are now leveraging IoT and smart technologies to facilitate remote monitoring, management and control of critical assets, generating huge streams of real-time data that can be used to provide critical insights and actionable information.
In fact, smart technologies are becoming increasingly critical to the successful functioning of cities and other urban environments. For smart city planners, IoT is becoming a top priority for this reason.
In our study, The Journey to IoT Maturity, published two years ago, a survey of IT decision makers from adopter organisations – including those operating in smart cities, smart utilities and industrial IoT – more than 92% of respondents plan to invest in IoT technologies in order to remain competitive. This consensus is leading to an uptick in planned deployments, with smart streetlighting as one area where IoT is having a major impact.
According to the Global Smart Street Lighting & Smart Cities: Market Forecast (2020-2029) Volume VI, more than one in four streetlights globally have been converted to LEDs, while over 10 million smart streetlights have been connected globally (not including China and India).
As the deployment of smart streetlights rise, the benefits become more evident. In Miami in Florida, for example, half a million streetlights have been connected, helping to dramatically reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions across the city. In Paris, 280,000 connected streetlights are delivering 70 per cent savings on annual streetlight energy costs, according to IoT Analytics.
The business case is clear with more IoT adopters ramping up investment. According to Wi-SUN’s IoT report, adopters that are very likely or definitely planning to deploy the technology for streetlighting has risen to 72% in 2022, up from 61% (in our 2017 IoT study).
Miami and Paris are just two examples of streetlighting projects supported by Wi-SUN FAN (Field Area Networks) wireless mesh technology.
The City of London has also deployed a Wi-SUN network to support 15,000 connected streetlights, as well as supporting other applications for environmental purposes and for monitoring the presence of lifebelts along the Thames. The initiative has become a core component of the capital’s transition to a smart city, with sensors used to collect data and build a business case for further investment.
Out-dated and inefficient lighting systems were replaced to help manage rising energy costs, reduce energy consumption and improve citizen safety, lighting up London’s streets, walkways, landmarks, and other infrastructure like bridges and tunnels.
To succeed in a project of such scale, the City required a wireless communications network capable of reaching the urban landscape’s uniquely dense and narrow lanes that lie between the modern high rises and historic buildings. Wi-SUN FAN provided an optimal solution as a technology capable of connecting all of the lights and providing a robust system to control lighting levels and fault reporting through a central management system.
Completed over four years ago, the City authority is now saving 60% on its energy costs derived from light and has since moved into the next phases of its smart city journey, installing traffic and air quality monitoring sensors powered by the very same network as part of a trial into zero emissions.
The success of smart streetlamps in London is a compelling case study. Occupying just over a square mile, the City has a large population of around 450,000 workers in the daytime, but only 9,400 permanent residents at night. Managing and moving such volumes of people is a massive challenge, and the streetlighting initiative has played an important role in supporting this, balancing the need for public safety, energy efficiency under increasing sustainability pressures and saving money.
With population densities rising and legacy infrastructure struggling to cope as more and more people move into cities, such technologies have a critical role to play in helping to ensure the smooth daily functioning of utilities, transport, lighting and other vital activities.