Optimizing Infrastructure – Smart Grids
Posted June 14th, 2013
There are approximately 35 million street lights in the United States; together they make up 40% of an average city’s energy bill.
In January, the city of Los Angeles began a lighting optimization process that would see it convert its 210,000 street lights to energy efficient LED’s. City planners expect 140,000 of those street lights to be converted by this month. The process has been daunting, but the payback has been huge- having already saved more than $5.3 million a year. Once the entire project is completed, Los Angeles is expected to shave $7.5million off of its annual electric bill.
Other cities have seen similarly remarkable results as well. Baltimore saved $2million a year after replacing 70,000 street lights.
Other cities are taking notice. Portland started a similar project in February, and other cities, including San Francisco, Seattle, and San Antonio plan to start their conversions soon.
Impressive results, but the savings could be much greater. According to a June 2012 Climate Group report, LEDs can save 80% of lighting energy if they are coupled with smart controls.
This is where Redwood City – based Silver Springs Networks comes into the picture.
The company’s smart grid technology allows utilities to better manage supply and demand. It is based on a network card- used for electric, gas, water meters and thermostats- that works in unison with Silver Spring’s software and networking technologies to help utilities intelligently improve their energy management and efficiency.
Silver Springs Networks has now turned their attention to streetlight optimization projects. They are partnering with Streetlight. Vision to create a smart city solution to help cities and municipalities optimize both their current and their new LED lighting networks.
The offering is targeted towards the optimization of lighting networks, but the companies have announced that their joint product offering is applicable as well for controlling traffic lights, managing parking meters and monitoring environmental sensors.
In May, a pilot was announced that will focus on a small portion of a central Paris (yes, Paris, France) neighborhood along the Seine.
Paris’s goal is to reduce its overall lighting energy consumption by 30% by 2020, through a combination of more efficient lighting and smarter control systems. Before the pilot, the City of Light’s only real option was to institute an unpopular daily lights-out regime between 1am and 7am.
The pilot program gives city planners the opportunity to forgo the lights out mandate and instead realize the needed cost savings by linking both street lights and traffic signals via a unified wireless networking platform in order to drive better operational efficiency out of the entire system.
The pilot does not address proactively replacing streetlights with LEDs or other more efficient light sources. Instead, it’s aimed at networking what’s already there for increased operational efficiency. For example, each networked street light or traffic signal can deliver useful information to operators, including whether they’re on, off, working or out of operation.
This is a vast improvement, allowing cities or utilities to efficiently direct replacement crews to burned-out lights as they happen, instead of waiting for complaints or on-site inspections to discover the problem.
Stay tuned for more information on the results of this pilot program!
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