Smart City Lighting

Cities everywhere are increasingly turning to smart city lighting to reduce the cost and consumption of energy. Part of the movement toward smart city solutions that seeks to solve urban challenges with IoT sensors, data and analytics, smart lighting involves a number of technologies that can help to improve the efficiency of city services and the quality of life for city residents.

Smart city lighting may be installed both indoors and outdoors and typically includes:

• LED lighting with an IP connection for remote control and monitoring.
• Adaptable dimming and brightening that can be programmed and controlled automatically.
• Intelligent energy metering and billing.

Additionally, the lamp poles used for smart city street lighting may incorporate other smart technologies such as sensors to monitor weather and air quality, video surveillance to aid in crime reduction, and smart parking sensors that help provide drivers with information about open parking spaces.

Benefits of smart city lighting

The advantages of smart city lighting include:

• Cost savings. Lighting is often one of the largest energy expenses for municipalities. It’s estimated that outdoor lighting may consume as much as one-half of a city’s total energy budget each year. By substituting traditional lamps with LED fixtures, cities can significantly reduce both the consumption and cost of electricity. Additional savings can be achieved by dimming lights when no one is present or when artificial illumination is not needed.
• Easier maintenance. Smart city lighting can be remotely monitored and managed, reducing the need for and cost of on-site visits from maintenance crews.
• Better service. With greater control over when and where smart city lighting is used, cities can tailor illumination to the needs of citizens. For example, in some cities, street lights are brightened as school is getting out in the afternoon.
• Smaller carbon footprint. By using less energy, smart city lighting helps cities reduce energy consumption overall.

Spectrum Enterprise: delivering smart city lighting connectivity

Smart city lighting solutions, and outdoor lighting in particular, require a variety of connectivity technologies that include cellular, wired and wireless. Additionally, like all smart city solutions, smart lighting requires a high-performing network that can handle and transmit the flood of data produced by thousands or millions of smart city street lights sensors.

With one of the largest LTE cellular networks in the country and more than 840,000 miles of fiber network infrastructure throughout the U.S., Spectrum Enterprise is a trusted technology partner to many existing smart cities as well as municipalities that are laying the groundwork for smart infrastructure. Spectrum is investing more than $25 billion nationwide over the next few years to add additional capacity and capabilities, positioning the company to help solve a number of urban challenges through data and connectivity.

To support smart city lighting and other smart technology, Spectrum Enterprise offers:

• A two-way, fully interactive digital network with symmetrical connection speeds up to 100 Gbps.
• One of the nation’s largest LTE cellular networks.
• Internet connections for homes and businesses with speeds up to 1 Gb.
• WiFi hotspots that will soon offer connection speeds up to 1 Gb wirelessly.

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