Building Intelligent Communities with Advanced Streetlighting

This guide, written by Lightsavers Canada, provides an introduction to the various ways in which light-emitting diode (LED) street lighting can benefit communities that want to use an adaptable platform. It aims to encourage potential, help overcome barriers and guide the development of smart and connected communities.

Today, LED technology remains the first choice for the installation of new road lights. In a number of large-scale conversion projects around the world, this technology is gradually replacing existing high intensity discharge (HID) luminaires. LED luminaires enable the implementation of intelligent networked infrastructure, and are more efficient, reliable and durable than HIDs. This report explores all the benefits of LED technology.

As LED streetlight adoption has increased significantly over the past 10 years and continues to expand, the platform for smart city solutions is therefore growing accordingly. However, municipalities still face challenges to implementation. Potential barriers specific to adaptive controls usually are: utility rate structures; interoperability with hardware and software; low utility prices; technological comfort; potential legal issues related to safety and dimming; and IT security.

In order to overcome these obstacles, the greatest catalyst to increase adoption can be knowledge sharing about existing projects. Public agencies engaged in intelligent streetlighting applications should monitor and communicate lessons learned throughout each of the following project phases. For effective reporting, projects should evaluate common and repeatable performance measures, which can be universally understood. Sharing lessons learned from early adopters will ultimately advance technology, which increases public and government understanding and comfort and promotes adoption of new intelligent applications that foster a connected community and enhance quality of life