How to make street lights more efficient and sustainable?

How to make street lights more efficient and sustainable?

With more and more cities adopting smart city technologies, developers and city planners are finding new ways to transform existing utilities and city services such as lighting, waste management, and public safety, and making it more sustainable.

20 Oct, 2022
How to make street lights more efficient

Smart street lights were one of the first devices that revolutionized outdoor lighting systems. Increasingly, it seems like the next generation of smart street lights will serve as the foundation for complex systems and utilities that could easily transform the urban areas and make them safer and sustainable.

When talking about India, several cities are extensively illuminated with street lights at night. They are a significant source of power consumption. Thus, making it extremely important to analyze how energy efficient our streetlights are.

As per the United Nations report, India is estimated to add 416 million urban dwellers by the end of 2050. With the growing urbanization and migration to metropolitan cities, a strong focus has been put on the need of upgrading the ageing infrastructure to ensure holistic development and sustainability.

Let us talk about ways in which the street lighting solutions can be made more sustainable and efficient:

1. Switch traditional lights for LED lights

Replacing traditional lights for LED lights is not a new concept in quite a few places in India. And, an increase in demand for smart street lighting, has led to an increase in the production of LED lighting.

Furthermore, LED lighting does not carry mercury, unline high-pressure sodium lamps that are commonly used in streetlights, and they can also help in simplifying hazardous waste disposal for a site or a city.

 

In addition to that, smart street lighting consists of several smart sensors which make them truly intelligent. For instance, Wipro-led street lights consist of motion sensors, PAS systems, Wi-Fi and RF connectivity, weather sensors, Co2 sensors, etc.

2. IoT empowered street lighting solutions

With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), several LED street light manufacturers are integrating systems that can easily connect with a wireless network or ethernet. The sensor-based connected interface can help the user to easily monitor and control lighting systems. This is a great initiative, with users being able to control the consumption of light it can result in significant energy savings.

3. Solar street lighting

When you tap into the freely available reservoir of solar power, it is a great step towards making street lights more economical and efficient. As you might be aware, solar power is a renewable source of energy and it makes sense to build the street lighting system with the help of this resource. And, hence, solar LED street lighting will lead to energy-saving.

Final Note

More and more cities are now rapidly adopting smart street lighting to create smart cities of the future. With the help of quality LED light fixtures, as well as IoT-based connected interfaces, street lighting has, without a doubt, a smart future ahead of it.