Smart City Street Lighting

Smart city street lighting offers a brighter future

Municipalities throughout the U.S. are realizing the benefits of smart city street lighting. From significantly reducing costs to driving environmental sustainability, smart city lighting solutions are part of a collection of smart technologies that are helping cities to address a number of 21st-century urban challenges.

Smart city street lighting replaces traditional streetlamps with sensor-enabled LED lights. Smart lighting technology may also equip light poles with smart technology for other purposes such as video surveillance, climate monitoring and traffic monitoring.

Smart city street lighting offers many advantages over traditional technologies for illumination.

Lower costs. LED fixtures require far less energy to operate, reducing the electricity expense for cities by as much as 50%. Cities can reduce energy costs by another 20% to 30% by dimming lights when there is no activity nearby, and by waiting to turn streetlights on until they are really needed rather than powering up the streetlight system for a uniform period of time each day.
Simplified maintenance. Because the performance of smart city street lighting can be monitored remotely, cities can reduce the cost and complexity of maintaining thousands of lights throughout the city.
Smaller carbon footprint. With reduced needs for electricity, smart city streetlights help cities achieve their goals for environmental sustainability.
Increased safety. Smart city street lighting allows much more flexibility in providing illumination for specific areas and needs. For example, street lighting may be brightened in the late afternoon as children are getting out of school, and video surveillance technology embedded in street light poles can aid law enforcement in reducing crime.

Technology that powers smart city street lighting

While there are many types of smart city street lighting, most of the technology includes several essential components:

Dimmable LED lighting fixtures.
Smart city street lights sensors that allow lights to respond to weather conditions, movement of pedestrians and vehicles, actual levels of daylight illumination, and specific events such as road accidents or emergencies.
Network communications, including wired, wireless and/or cellular technology that allows smart city lighting to be monitored and controlled remotely.
Software used to manage thousands of assets, including LED fixtures, sensors, grid and communication network connections and other hardware and firmware.
Data analytics technology that aggregates data from thousands or millions of sensors and provides visualization dashboards and other tools that enable cities to manage smart city street lighting for desired benefits.
Security protocols that prevent cyberattacks against smart city street lighting systems.

Infrastructure for smart city street lighting from Spectrum Enterprise

Spectrum Enterprise provides the infrastructure required to connect and manage smart city street lighting and other smart city initiatives. Spectrum’s wholly-owned fiber network extends for more than 840,000 miles throughout the U.S., with another $25 billion in additional capacity and capabilities planned by 2021, providing the foundation of connectivity that empowers smart technology

Spectrum Enterprise is already a trusted provider to many urban areas as they implement smart city technology. Spectrum’s two-way, fully interactive digital network supports symmetrical connection speeds of up to 100 Gbps for government and enterprise clients. Spectrum also provides gigabit connections for homes and businesses throughout its service area, along with thousands of WiFi hotspots that will soon be capable of delivering connection speeds of 1 Gbps. And with one of the nation’s largest LTE cellular networks, Spectrum provides comprehensive connectivity solutions that are the foundation for smart city solutions today and tomorrow.

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