The system provides opportunities to improve operations and reduce costs with easy-to-generate reports, data visualizations and analytics that show how city lighting is performing.

It can manage workflows and send accurate work requests to field maintenance teams, use data to estimate when fixtures are nearing end-of-life, and schedule proactive maintenance or replacement.

With dedicated user roles and fully encrypted data streams, the software meets the highest security standards. Regular software updates ensure that the software is always up to date.

Accurate work instructions are sent directly from the system to field workers, eliminating the potential for false information and misunderstandings. Any changes made in the field are automatically tracked and incorporated, avoiding redundant data flows.

With an intuitive user interface and strict security standards, smart lighting system management is scalable to suit needs and provides complete visibility and control over the entire lighting system. Individual or group light point control provides flexibility in a single platform with the option to use licensed cellular networks and license-free RF communication architectures.

The information collected from the Lighting asset management system is stored in a local database or in the cloud. City administrators can use this data to further optimize and improve lighting operations.

In 2020, smart city developments were greatly influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic, as social distancing required more contactless interactions when accessing public services or making transactions. Public safety was the major issue and accelerated improvements in infrastructure, expansion of partnership networks and digitization of priority environments such as public transport.

For the year 2021, foundational technologies were still a part of this transformation. Meanwhile, the latest trends and technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics and 5G have taken center stage in this transformational journey.

Public safety continued to be the number one priority as the pandemic continued. Therefore, contactless and cashless technologies continued to focus on the digitization of public transport ticketing services through the use of bank cards, closed-loop cards, QR codes and NFC wearable technologies.

5G wireless technology was first launched in 2019, but globally it has been slowed by the technology gap in emerging countries and the perception that 4G is still working well.

Collecting and analyzing real-time consumer data is critical to staying competitive and starting the smart city transformation. The demand for data analysis is constantly increasing due to the large amounts of data accumulated by operators and municipalities and the ability to use this analysis to support business decisions and improve the public environment.

Artificial intelligence has been adopted in other business areas, for example for fraud prevention. In recent years, it has been introduced into public services in areas such as traffic control, automatic fare collection and parking automation.

In 2021, cities continued to seek best solutions and practices for smart city transformation, learning from existing implementations where open-loop technologies linked data into a single ecosystem or supported mobile QR and facial recognition technology, providing methods additional payment.

The field of development is vast and does not end with public transportation or merchant contactless payments. The technology can be implemented in other areas such as education, entertainment or the exchange economy to create a contactless, safe and accessible environment.

Full visibility of the street lighting infrastructure can be achieved through a centralized web-based dashboard, managing the lighting remotely through a standard web browser.

The smart lighting system allows the creation of customized light groups or the management of each individual light point. Depending on the time of year, the lighting can be adjusted, the light comes on if there is an accident/movement, and zones can be set to vary the light levels in the city, and pedestrian crossings or other pedestrian areas are well lit.

Automatic fault detection alerts immediately when there is an outage or failure so that maintenance teams can be quickly deployed, reducing citizen complaints and optimizing maintenance operations.

Energy consumption and CO₂ emissions can be reduced with lighting programs and activity or presence sensors. The street lighting schedule just needs to be aligned with the time of day or year so that the street lights are only used when needed.

Connected street lights installed in the city can be controlled remotely through an intuitive dashboard that triggers light scenes or programs over a standard mobile or other network. Scene management software provides an overview of the lighting infrastructure, enabling the planning, scheduling and triggering of light scenes remotely.

The software enables the granting of role-based permissions and access rights to individuals so that they can perform clearly defined tasks through the cloud-based dashboard.

Presence sensors can be added to a light pole to detect street activity so light levels can be reduced when people and vehicles are not around late at night. This helps reduce energy consumption when the lights are not needed, but also ensures well-lit streets when people are around.

Open and secure APIs allow scene management software to be integrated with other city and IT management systems or dashboards, allowing lighting to be synchronized with other city services or activities. APIs also allow access to light control to be shared with third parties and approved software developers, who could create additional applications or services to drive innovation in citizen engagement or city operations.

Switching to LED will provide energy savings of up to 70%, and by adding smart controls, savings increase to 80%. By using sensors to detect when people or cars are present, lighting can be dimmed when the streets are empty.

They can be metered in real time or data can be collected on energy consumption based on lighting in the city. This data can be used to gain insights to create benchmarks and improvement initiatives to further drive energy efficiency that reduces CO2 emissions.

Continuous energy consumption measurement and data provide new insights that support more informed decisions to help improve operational efficiency and optimize lighting performance.

Continuous monitoring and data collection of energy consumption facilitates the achievement of sustainability goals and provides data to support the city’s sustainability programs and goals.

LED street lighting coupled with smart controls reduces energy consumption by up to 80%. Connected LED lighting enables intelligent light control and enables the collection of data for each point of light, which is then transmitted over a network and analyzed to provide new insights.

By adding presence sensors to connected street lights, energy consumption can be further reduced by using software to automatically dim light levels if no people or vehicles are detected.

Data collected from street lighting can be stored locally or in the cloud, depending on the customer’s preferences or data governance policy. The City owns the data and may share it with third parties or independent software providers.

Smart lighting makes the urban environment safe for people at night, while improving the quality of life both at night and during the day, while enabling a more harmonious existence of technology, people, flora and fauna, which cannot be made with traditional technology. Ultimately, a smart lighting infrastructure provides a ubiquitous network across a city that can be the initial backbone for smart-city services and technologies.

Smart lighting consists of dimmable light emitting diode (LED) luminaires with sensor and controller interfaces, a control system and a supporting infrastructure.

The control system is composed of lighting nodes, a communication network with one or more lighting node controllers and a human interface. Smart lighting, when adaptive lighting is implemented, can reduce lighting energy consumption by up to 50% while providing higher quality light for improved safety.

Finally, the use of smart lighting infrastructure as a starting point for smart-city devices and services is introduced. The use of surplus power available in lighting power lines is discussed, as well as the use of the controller network for additional services or data collection and transmission.

Smart lighting is available and offers significant potential benefits to cities. Smart lighting seems to be the logical starting point of any smart city plan.

Public lighting infrastructure is particularly well placed to assume the role of a platform that provides not only smart lighting but also a range of other functions and benefits to cities. Ubiquitous in cities, streetlights have a great potential for standardization and could integrate various sensors, telecommunications and technologies needed in smart cities as well because they provide access to charging.

A smart and connected lighting system is part of a local, wireless, decentralized or cloud-based network. Data is collected from sensors on poles, being installed cameras, daylight, motion or noise detection and processed to achieve optimal energy efficiency and safety operation of public lighting. The additional energy savings of smart lighting compared to LED lighting are at least 60% higher, ensuring a sustainable investment.

In general, there is a lack of knowledge among public and local governments regarding digital solutions. For citizens, the Smart Lighting system raises primary privacy and surveillance concerns, given the data that could be collected, or they believe there could be safety issues for workers due to multiple wires and devices.

City budgets are often limited, making it difficult to invest in the switch to smart lighting. The need for additional networks (internet, additional power) may result in higher expenses. Current infrastructure may be too old to accommodate smart technologies, requiring new equipment.

More technical and safety training is needed for workers, given the innovative technology, some sensors (eg noise sensors) can be difficult to install.

For all the additional functions of such an infrastructure to work as intended it is important to have uninterrupted power. However, this can be difficult in regions with frequent power problems.

Smart Lighting relies on data to address public lighting challenges.

The most visible use of Smart Lighting is obviously the automatic control of equipment. By equipping streetlights with technologies such as cameras, photocells or IoT sensors, local authorities can collect multiple data: street traffic and traffic conditions in real time.

Switching from traditional equipment to less energy-consuming equipment, such as LED lamps, generates energy savings even with constant lighting. With a smart lighting system, communities can take their energy efficiency to the next level. With intelligent street lighting control, only the necessary energy is actually consumed.

Reducing electricity consumption has a direct impact on the community’s budget. Smart lighting is precisely at the crossroads of these two problems. In addition to lowering energy bills, smart lighting helps reduce maintenance costs for public lighting equipment.

While maintenance has traditionally required the intervention of municipal employees or specialist companies, it can now be done remotely with better cost control. In addition, a Smart Lighting system facilitates the detection of equipment anomalies and, thanks to data analysis, the detection of billing anomalies, which are also sources of savings.

The reduction of the public lighting budget is directly proportional to the initial investment made by the authorities. Investing in a performing Smart Lighting system would even bring savings of 100%.

Within one year, December 2020-December 2021, the price of imported energy increased by 115% and the price of energy from domestic production by 73%.

So far there have been no import price increases of more than 30% and domestic production prices have not increased by more than 10% per year in recent years.

Prices rose less strongly in the United States than in Europe, partly due to a smaller increase in natural gas prices. Average prices in the fourth quarter of 2021 were nearly 75% above the 2016-2020 Q4 average.

After a peak related to lack of supply in the first quarter and a subsequent decline in the second quarter of 2021, in Japan prices rose again in the second half of 2021. 2021 prices exceeded the 2016-2020 average by 80%.

Prices in the fourth quarter of 2021 in France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom were three to more than four times higher than the average of the fourth quarter of 2016-2020. This was mainly caused by the steep rise in gas prices, along with increased demand.

In terms of energy consumption, in 2019, just over 24% of energy consumption came from renewable energy sources, placing our country in 10th place in the EU and above the Union average.

In 2020, electricity production in Romania was composed of 12.4% wind energy, 3.4% from solar photovoltaic panels, while 27.6% of electricity production came from hydropower. In total, the production of renewable energy (wind, photovoltaic and biomass) was 16%.

Romania has witnessed a decline in the attractiveness of renewable energy, partly due to a lack of adequate regulations and adequate government support. According to the latest renewable energy country attractiveness index, once among the top 40 most attractive countries in terms of renewable energy in 2015 (34th place), in 2020 our country has fallen below this top, being overtaken by countries European countries such as Poland, Greece and Austria.

However, in the context of the introduction of the European Green Deal, several multinational energy companies have assimilated the wave of changes and implemented the sustainability agenda in their business strategy. At the same time, they announced their intention to invest in clean energy projects at the local level.

To become smart from normal lights, street lights need a control system, which normally comprises controllers, sensors and gateways. These components, through a certain wireless network, connect to a central management system from where they can be controlled, monitored and managed remotely. Street lights can be made smart by attaching cameras or other sensors that detect movement. Street lights can communicate with each other thanks to additional technology.

The basic component of an intelligent street lighting system is the intelligent pole, which consists of the following three components:

LED/HID lamps – Intelligent street lighting must ensure specific values ​​of brightness, uniformity and glare depending on the type of road to guarantee maximum visual safety for drivers and pedestrians. For this purpose, high-performance light sources such as high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps and LED lamps are used. These efficient lighting products also have an increased lamp life and reduced energy consumption compared to traditional lights. The true intelligence of these lamp solutions is based on a digital approach where a microcontroller manages all the functions needed to have an efficient and functional lamp, while managing all the data to implement a smart street lighting network.
IoT-based communication – networked street lighting systems can be managed through several proven communication standards. Communication is two-way and the monitored system can send and receive information and commands to and from the lamp. How a facility manager decides, for example, how much to light a lamp depends on a lot of information, such as weather conditions, the angle of the lamp, whether or not there are people nearby, road conditions, the time of day day and others. This information can be collected on a cluster basis and sent to a service center, where the data is monitored and action taken.
Smart Sensors – as mentioned earlier, smart sensors can be used to detect real-time changes in information such as lamp tilt, weather conditions, air pollution, natural light availability, and more. This information can increase road safety and reduce maintenance costs.

Implementing an intelligent street lighting control system has somewhat high initial costs. The savings and other day-one benefits in the system, however, make this business an attractive prospect, with a return on investment of between five and seven years.

The image of a city using such smart technology would also generally improve, attracting more visitors and investment.