Brussels Deploys a City-Wide Smart Street Light System

We often hear that streetlights are the gateway to a smart city, but sometimes a smart streetlight solution is really just about the lights. The most important for us was about quality of our networks and service to the inhabitants. We're also... is home to over 85 ,000 streetlights, thousands of which are now being connected to a smart street light network. So it's a project we began with in 2012. It's a big story and we began with on -site tests, but on this moment it was proprietary solutions. We tested it out. A few years later after technological watch and results of those tests, we decided to go to a more bigger project for connected lighting, so we speak not about light lighting fixtures, we speak really about connected lighting for Brussels. The city wanted a smart street light solution that would provide a global status map, advanced schedulers and real-time control. It also wanted to immediately spot failures both at the street light and cabinet level. So we quest for information because we were wondering what about the solutions, what about the lifetime of our installations, what about the vendor. the compatibility and so on and after even if we received a few answers we saw real trends with talk v2 with the nema circuit and so on and so we decided to go further we first made a business case which was neutral slightly positive and we decided to go to an official tender the french utility company ng won that tender it worked with a trio of manufacturers to deliver an interoperable solution one that included luminaire controller, software, and a communication network. The first one is Cytron, the second one is FlashNet, and the third one is Schroeder outlet. The interoperability was achieved thanks to the talc protocol between the central management software provided by CityLynx and the Streetlight control nodes. And as a result, this solution could really meet all of the city's needs. For instance, a FlashNet. It's it's the best one for the standard, but you cannot make dynamic control. But with the outlet, you can do that. Sibelgo is also the first utility to include the USIFI data model for interchangeability in its specification as a preferred requirement. Most of the partners they choose are USIFI members, except I -Tron, but all the rest is USIFI members. And so it led to evolve and to have future opportunities to go further and further in the connected lighting solution. Brussels began to deploy the solution in March of 2021, and within two weeks, the city connected 2,000 lights. That number is estimated to reach 6,000 by June, 9,000 within one year, with the city pushing to have 25% connected within three years. And with this rollout, the city hopes to reduce energy consumption by 20% come 2035. And now I see that the energy potential seems to be higher than 14, three years ago when we calculated this one because it leads to other things we didn't expect such as light bubbles, adaptive lighting. We have no project with adaptive lighting that gives another energy consumption lowering and it's quite interesting. It all comes as street light technologies become easier and cheaper to adopt, which is why we're seeing an increasing number of cities. invest in this technology, and they're doing so under the premise that they can use a streetlight network to enable the communication of IoT devices. For example, you'll often find sensors and cameras on the light poles, which use a streetlight network to send real-time data on traffic, air quality, temperature and more. But this isn't an option in Brussels and many cities where street lights are connected to cabinets rather than the general grid. These cabinets have their electricity turned off. during the day, meaning there's no energy on the streetlight grid and the connected photo cells or control nodes are off. As a result, the cities that turn their electricity off during the day are limited by the smart city use cases they can achieve. In Brussels, for example, the smart city applications center around lighting. And for example, we are now busy with the company and they're using our lighting to make dynamic lighting on open data on real- time and we see really a potential and so yes there are people asking us to collaborate in smart city lab with our lighting solutions it's an industry -wide debate should cities and utilities turn the electricity on for their street light networks during the day to support more smart city applications in brussels case the city has kept the electricity off because of concerns around safety and the consideration of other services that use the grid for example the lights at bus stops are also power through the streetlight network. It's a topic we'll continue to cover in future stories so be sure to stick with current insights and if you have a question or comment be sure to hit the link below.