Smart City Lighting Solutions

Upgrading municipal buildings and streets with smart city lighting solutions is a highly effective way to reduce costs, minimize energy consumption and improve the safety and aesthetic of public spaces.

Lighting – including streetlights, outdoor illumination and indoor lighting for city-owned buildings, schools and facilities – represents a significant part of a city’s annual energy budget. For many cities, the cost of lighting may represent as much as 50% of energy expenses in a year. This is due in part to the inefficiency of traditional lighting – indoor lighting is often left on long after the end of the workday, and streetlights may shine for hours before sunset or after sunrise.

Like all smart cities technology, smart city lighting solutions use data, analytics and connectivity to respond to real-time conditions, dimming when lights are no longer necessary or brightening at times when extra illumination is needed. In some cities, smart city street lighting may turn off at night when no cars or pedestrians are passing, and may brighten in late afternoon when children are getting out of school. Lighting in a smart building can respond in real-time to the presence of workers or visitors and to levels of natural illumination.

In addition to reducing the cost electricity 20 to 30% by reducing unnecessary illumination, smart city lighting solutions also save energy by using LED fixtures rather than traditional lamps, which can add an additional 50% savings.

Smart city lighting solutions also help to minimize the carbon footprint of an urban area, improve safety in public areas, and simplify maintenance by alerting crews when lights need attention.

Components of smart city lighting solutions

Smart city lighting solutions encompass a variety of technologies, including:

• LED lighting fixtures that have the ability to brighten or dim in response to weather conditions, actual daylight levels, specific events such as accidents or emergencies, or the movement of people or vehicles.
• Networking pipelines, equipment and data services that connect individual instruments, sensors and other devices. Smart city lighting solutions may rely on any combination of wired, wireless and cellular connectivity.
• Software to control and receive data from thousands of LED fixtures and sensors.
• Data management and analytics that provide visualizations, dashboards and analysis.
• Security to protect smart city lighting from cyberattacks.
• Additional technology such video surveillance equipment that can aid law enforcement, and smart city street lights sensors that monitor climate conditions, air quality, or even available parking spaces.

Powering smart city lighting solutions with Spectrum Enterprise

To provide cities with the infrastructure they require to power smart city lighting solutions, smart building technology and other smart city initiatives, Spectrum Enterprise offers more than 840,000 miles of wholly-owned fiber network throughout the U.S. As a trusted technology partner to many existing smart cities, Spectrum is investing an $25 billion in additional capabilities and capacity by 2021 to ensure that municipalities have the infrastructure they required to power smart solutions today and tomorrow.

To support smart cities, Spectrum Enterprise provides:

• Connection speeds up to 100 Gbps on a two-way, fully interactive digital network for large enterprises and local governments.
• One of the largest LTE cellular networks in the nation.
• Thousands of WiFi hotspots that will soon add 5G and 802.11ax technology to deliver wireless speeds of up to 1 Gbps.
• Internet connectivity for homes and businesses with gigabit connections speeds.

Learn more about Spectrum Smart Cities at www.spectrumsmartcities.com.