INTELLIGENT STREET LIGHTING

The most important infrastructure

Exploring innovative and energyefficient lighting technologies with the opportunity to turn existing infrastructures into smart networks was the cornerstone idea of the Danish Outdoor Lighting Lab (DOLL), the largescale pilot project promoted by the city of Copenhagen for the development of future LED-lighting solutions. Launched in September 2014, DOLL aims to promote energy efficiency through intelligent indoor and outdoor lighting solutions and foster job creation. DOLL is a consortium of three partners: the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), the municipality of Albertslund and Gate 21, a partnership of local authorities, private companies and research institutions.

An ‘Intelligent Lighting System’ is a control or programming of the light source/luminaire. Control could be in real-time, based on sensor-information and data, example; weather conditions, traffic, emergencies and other information that you code into the system.

The system could also be adaptive, which means it could collect, analyze and learn from the behaviour and conditions, adapting to the most relevant performance and adjustment. Simpler adaptive systems are based on reporting from traficants and citizens on failures, dissatisfaction with orientation, safety or it could be simple programming by a clock, adjusting to time of day or night.

For this kind of solution to work best, it requires an urban infrastructure. Apart from the simple programming, there is a need for IOT system enabling communication between lamps and/or control center; fiber in the ground; Wi-Fi with access points, enabling either pier-to-pier control or clustered zigbee, mesh systems; GSM 3g, 4g, 5g; powerline systems running in street series through the cabinets and radio frequencies.

The lighting is migrating from being a standalone urban product – to become part of the modern urban communication& management system and infrastructure. The cities should think of it as a horizontal enabling infrastructure – and not treat lighting as a road service. It is far more important. If not – the city will risk big extra expenses, when meeting demands on data and smart city amenities of the future.
– Flemming Madsen, Founder of DOLL and Chief Developer in GATE21

The lighting installations is distributed all over the city, it has power and is hanging high. Thus it is the single most important infrastructure in the emerging smart city.