What Role Does LED Street Light Play in Future Smart City

According to a report by the National League of Cities (NLC), 66% of the cities in the United States have invested in the development of smart cities. 25% cities with smart city systems are also exploring this new trend.

What is a city of wisdom? In fact, the answer is all inclusive, but the key feature of smart city is Connected City. Future smart cities may be full of sensors and cameras, so that information can be transmitted instantaneously.

Some cities like the state of California and Washington, D.C., have begun to use the information obtained by analytical sensors and cameras to match the cloud data, which has been used to solve problems in the cities, including energy efficiency, public safety, infrastructure, transportation and urgent measures. But how does the "network" of smart city connect in series?

At present, "smart city" is often referred to as a tandem smart city. In accordance with the needs of various regions, intelligent remote control of street lighting can save energy consumption by remote control of its brightness. Building intelligent street lights is the layout of intelligent network system. Companies such as Silver Spring Networks, Signify and Sensus already have smart lighting solutions. These schemes are to place nodes (node) on intelligent street lamps to control each cell.

However, the construction of intelligent street lamps is a project which costs money, so not every city has enough budget to load. Take Richmond Hill in Ontario, Canada as an example. The maintenance cost of 15000 high-pressure sodium lamps in the town is huge. So the town hired Ameresco, a renewable energy company, to replace street lamps with LED street lamps, which can save about $1 million 500 thousand a year in maintenance and operating costs.

Richmond Hill mayor Dave Barrow said that smart city is a forward-looking investment, on the one hand, it takes about 6 to 7 years to earn a return. On the other hand, replacing street lights with LED lights can reduce costs and protect the environment.

Replacing street lights with LED lights reduces energy consumption by 50 to 60 percent. The LED street lamp life is about 20 years, so this can significantly reduce 80% of the maintenance cost. Data show that the implementation of the scheme will reduce 575 tons of carbon dioxide per year.