ICT solutions and network equipment provider Huawei, a Council Associate Partner, has jumped into the smart street lighting market with its Connected City Lighting Solution, which it says is the industry's first IoT lighting offering that provides intelligent control on several levels. One of its top selling points is like that of many other smart street lighting providers: it will save your city money -- a lot of it. Huawei says in the news release below its system includes on-off switches and brightness controls for each lamp, and that it can cut energy costs by 80% compared to traditional lighting.
Another big point Huawei makes, as other smart lighting providers have, is that its system can accommodate third party apps for a broad range of other purposes like smart transportation, environmental monitoring and municipal management systems. That capability and the potential cost savings alone make smart lighting networks a win-win for city leaders who see the value in becoming smarter, integrated and connected -- and doing it efficiently.
If your city is reluctant to get on board, remember this: While you're waiting, other cities are moving forward with their upgrade plans and sharpening their competitive edge in the process. Smart street lights are, as we've said before, an excellent on-ramp to a smart city. -- Jesse Berst
Huawei launches Connected City Lighting Solution, saving municipal lighting energy by 80%[Hannover, Germany, March 15, 2016] Today at CeBIT 2016, Huawei debuted its Connected City Lighting Solution, the industry's first Internet of Things (IoT) lighting solution with multi-level intelligent control. Huawei Connected City Lighting Solution connects street lamps to the IoT and adopts a GIS-based management system, enabling cities to enhance the control and performance of every street lamp. The solution provides municipal managers with status information on each lamp, in every street and enables precise control of on-off switches and brightness of individual street lamps, allowing on-demand lighting and a reduction in energy consumption by up to 80%.
According to The Climate Group, there are approximately 304 million street lamps around the world, and the number is expected to reach 352 million by 2025. Street lamps are almost ubiquitous in cities. While these lamps bring convenience to people's lives, they also consume a vast amount of energy and increase management costs for municipalities. For example, London has approximately 35,000 street lamps, resulting in an estimated total power consumption of 56,000,000kWh per annual, together with inspection costs and maintenance fees, the street lamps significantly impact municipal expenses. Huawei Connected City Lighting Solution is designed to address these issues.
Integrated Smart Lighting Policies to Ensure High Energy Efficiency
With Huawei’s Connected City Lighting Solution, each street lamp is equipped with a power and brightness controller. Unlike industry-standard access methods such as through Wi-Fi, Huawei adopts 6LoWPAN technology, which has lower power consumption, and can automatically diagnose, network, and trouble-shoot problems, as well as enable better interaction between street lamps and other smart devices such as sensors. To enhance the control and performance of street lamps, the solution integrates a series of preset smart lighting policies to:
- Automatically calculate lighting duration based on local longitude and latitude, and dynamically adjust lighting duration according to the specific season, month, and day.
- Smartly adjust brightness by connecting built-in brightness sensors with third-party traffic and people flow sensors, or based on weather and other environment conditions. For instance, automatically reduce street lamp brightness or only switch on every other lamp at midnight when traffic volume is low; or turn lamps on when there is poor visibility such as on rainy days.
Huawei Connected City Lighting Solution pares LED lamps with smart lighting polices. When compared with conventional street lamps, such as high pressure sodium lamps, they help reduce energy consumption by up to 80%.
Visible Management and Online Inspection to Prevent Failures
Huawei's solution adopts a GIS-based management system, which displays comprehensive information about the street lamps, including the number of lamps in each street, their current status, as well as their installation position and time. Using this solution, one person can manage thousands of lamps in different streets. When a street lamp malfunctions, the system is automatically alerted and sends a message to notify maintenance personnel. Additionally, the solution provides full lifecycle management to prevent potential malfunctions. This reduces the need for on-site inspection, cutting manpower costs while improving management efficiency.
Multi-level Smart Control for Enhanced Protection and Reliability
Traditional street lamps are controlled collectively at a central point, and cannot be controlled individually. A system failure in this scenario could result in massive energy wastage, such as street lamps being turned on during bright sunlight. Huawei Connected City Lighting Solution addresses this challenge by providing multi-level smart controls, which comprise network smart controls on the first level and local smart controls on a secondary level. The agile IoT gateways and street lamp controllers are equipped with lightweight components to execute lighting policies and deliver a two-level localized decision-making mechanism. When the uplink network of agile gateways fails, local control protocols are enforced. Therefore, if the 6LoWPAN sensor network fails, street lamp controllers can work offline and function independently. Multi-level smart control minimizes the lamps’ dependency of centralized controls, thereby increasing flexibility and reliability.
All-layer Openness to Build a Smart City
Huawei Connected City Lighting Solution adopts an all-layer open architecture:
- Its base-layer processor development can be based on lightweight open-source LiteOS, facilitating standardization and efficient connections among third-party devices.
- The agile gateways support a virtualized architecture, enabling the development and installation of customized applications by partner companies.
- The agile controllers also provide third-party application systems with a standard northbound interface, helping to better integrate various service components, allowing comprehensive interaction with the smart transportation, environment monitoring, and municipal management systems.
Commenting on the role of Huawei Connected City Lighting Solution to drive Smart City development, Wu Chou, CTO of Huawei Switch and Enterprise Communications Product Line, said, "Since the launch of Huawei Agile IoT Solution in May 2015, we have delivered several successful applications, including the power IoT solution, smart building solution, and smart stockbreeding solution. Huawei Connected City Lighting Solution is another powerful application of Huawei Agile IoT Solution, and an important advancement towards a truly Smart City. Lighting IoT lays a solid foundation for the integration of a variety of sensors, to facilitate functions such as environmental and transportation monitoring, and installation of smart charging facilities and intelligent rubbish bins, providing Smart City development with valuable big data and integrated interaction to improve citizens’ lives."
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