Smart street lights vision for Australia

Australian cities can leverage Internet of Things (IoT) technology to help modernise critical infrastructure such as intelligent and adaptive street lighting, according to a network provider specialising in smart city and smart energy infrastructure.

Speaking at the Australian Smart Lighting Summit, Mr CJ Boguszewski, global commercial lead for Smart City Applications for Silver Spring, presented a vision for the future of smart city and smart energy infrastructure in Australia.

“By establishing an open, standards-based IP network underpinning multiple applications, from energy to public lighting to traffic light systems to disaster sensors, cities can leverage network economics to cost-effectively deploy new smart infrastructure services to their citizenry over time,” said Boguszewski. “With smart energy networks deployed in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, the market has made strides in proving out the critical role technology plays in helping modernise its energy and municipal infrastructure. The next step is advancing to more sophisticated IoT applications, and intelligent street lights are often the onramp to smarter cities.”

Boguszewski said that cities today in Australia are faced with costly, ageing infrastructure. Street lights, for example, can consume as much as 40% of a city’s energy budget. Smart public lighting networks can help drive reductions of more than 10% in street light energy consumption and can help lower maintenance costs by up to 30%. When combined with LEDs, he said that network technology can help deliver up to 60% in energy savings over traditional high-pressure sodium street lights and can help reduce maintenance costs by up to 35%.

Silver Spring says that networking platforms help improve energy efficiency and empower consumers to make smarter energy decisions. In New Zealand, SmartCo, a consortium of electricity lines companies, is deploying an advanced smart grid network across New Zealand. In Asia, the Singapore Power Group is leveraging a countrywide IPv6 smart infrastructure networking platform to allow eligible customers to choose from a variety of retail energy providers and purchase electricity at wholesale market prices.