A Small Smart City Takes Shape in France

Is it easier or harder to deploy smart technology in a small city? It's a question that came to mind when we visited Saint-Louis-des-Sérands in northern France. Bonjour Saint-Louis-des-Sérands, c 'est une petite ville de moins de 5000 habitants, au bord de la rivière Oise à 5 km de Chantilly, 40 km de Paris. Alors c 'est une ville qui a la particularité d 'être vraiment à l 'intérieur d 'une agglomération. quite urban, which is Creil, but in the same time at the edge of this agglomeration. It's actually a rural territory with a very big agricultural plateau and a very important forest surface. There are 900 light points in this town and so far 320 have been updated with LEDs, a project that began in 2018 with the lighting company Straight Air. At St. Le Dessran, we have opted for an lowering the light power from 22h30. We make of the "-85%", so at the end of the night. The luminous power reaches its maximum at 6,5 hours. However, for security reasons, each mât is equipped with a presence detector. As a resultant, if a piéton passes, it reaches the power of the lampadaire to its maximum. This is also in accordance with our video protection project. to ensure a better capture of images in the middle of the night. Streetlights are often the first step for a municipality in becoming smart. The connectivity can be used to power a range of smart city applications. For Salon de Surat, the focus would center on becoming more sustainable and efficient, a difficult task when operating on a tight budget. Non-négligeable dans le volume d'investissement qu'on peut consentir à chaque année. A local utility contributed 25% of those funds. So to ease the cost, it spread the project over a five-year period. Of course, we must think about the cost of ownership over 20 to 25 years. And when you speak about it, it's a... The return of investment is about 10 years, so that's something that you can handle easily when you're a big city. But when you're a small city with small capacity of investment, that's a big challenge. Bruno Lafitte is an expert in lighting. He splits his time working with ADEM, the French Environment and Energy Management Agency, and he also works as an international consultant where he specializes in the installation of smart technology in small towns. In small cities, you don't have all the skills that are necessary for IoT and street lighting. So that's a second challenge, to find objective information about what is good for you, because there's a lot of opportunities with smart lighting, but also something that you don't need. In Salon Desarans' case, town reps knew they wanted to gain energy savings and cost. reductions. Now there are some benefits to working with in small towns that we have yet to mention. don't have the same kind of advanced technologies and legacy infrastructure as larger cities, so it's easier to get started. Plus, they don't face the same kind of public pressure and government regulations. It's that kind of flexibility that has encouraged Saint-Louis de Sourant to plan what's next in its smart city goals. We have the energy economy, we have the maintenance of security and I hope that we have the reality of security. So we want to transpose this consensus to other projects that we could have in this area. For projects concerning the energy efficiency of the municipal buildings, we will probably equip our heating system, the integrated controllers, in order to optimize their function. So what do you think? Is it easier or harder to build a smart city in a small city? We want to hear from you. Click on the link below to send us your comments and questions. And as always, stick with Current Insights for more stories like this.