Powerline comms to help cut cost of streetlighting

Echelon Corporation is working with Streetlight.Vision to reduce energy and maintenance costs for streetlight systems in Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Echelon Corporation is working with Streetlight.Vision to reduce energy and maintenance costs for streetlight systems in Europe, the Americas and Asia.

The intelligent, networked streetlight solution uses Echelon's technology and Streetlight.Vision's software to manage, monitor and remotely control streetlights.

The solution will be implemented by AMEC SPIE, one of the largest providers of streetlight related services to municipalities across Europe.

AMEC SPIE will initially target the French streetlight market with the solution - a market of over 8 million streetlights.

Environmental regulations are becoming increasingly strict in Europe, calling for the reduction of energy usage and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

By using the streetlight solution from Echelon and Streetlight.Vision, cities can expect to reduce energy usage by up to 40% and, for the average French city, the annual CO2 reduction could be up to 100 tonnes.

"With Echelon's technology and Streetlight.Vision's software we can propose a strategic solution to our clients to cut their budget spending while having a positive impact on the environment by reducing CO2 emissions associated with inefficient energy usage", said Bruno Vaslin, Marketing Manager responsible for developing AMEC SPIE's new offerings for municipalities.

"Moreover, Echelon's open technology provides us and our customers with an infrastructure that can later be expanded, allowing us to offer monitoring solutions for additional city services or to measure environmental factors such as noise, pollution and traffic levels, or air quality, temperature, and humidity".

"The ability to easily add additional sensors to the solution allows municipalities to maximise their investment and gain an accurate view of the health of the city".

Street lighting systems are expensive for cities to maintain due to the size of the system.

By integrating streetlight systems with control technology, the resulting "intelligent" system can be remotely monitored and controlled, which can significantly reduce maintenance costs and down time for failed lamps while creating a positive impact on citizen's security.

Simply dimming the streetlights to a lower light level in the middle of the night when there is less traffic substantially reduces the amount of energy used, and lowers energy costs.

These savings allow a city to better utilise its operating budget, freeing more budget to be spent on other programs and services where impact for its citizens is highest and help cities achieve a more environmentally and economically friendly profile.

"The combination of Echelon's technology together with our Streetlight.Vision monitoring software offers a compelling solution to cities and large companies such as AMEC SPIE", said Christophe Orceau, Streetlight.Vision's Chief Executive Officer.

"Beyond energy and maintenance savings for streetlights, Echelon's technology opens up our solution to the monitoring of virtually any device in the city".

"AMEC SPIE is already deploying such a vision, using the Streetlight.Vision solution, branded as City Networks, a secured online monitoring service for a city".

The intelligent streetlight solution from Echelon and Streetlight.Vision calls for the replacement of older, inefficient mechanical ballasts with LonWorks-enabled electronic ballasts, such as the smart ballast from SELC Ireland that includes Echelon's powerline communications technology.

Data from the streetlights will be collected by Echelon's i.LON 100 Internet servers, which manage the streetlights and use a standard wireless data network to communicate with a city's monitoring centre equipped with the Streetlight.Vision's monitoring web portal software.

The Streetlight.Vision software aggregates millions of data from the streetlights and other devices and provides the end user with a comprehensive package of Web streetlight management applications, including energy consumption analysis, automatic failure identification, preventive maintenance and remote testing and monitoring of streetlights on city maps.

The Streetlight.Vision software is also designed to provide aggregated information to existing applications such as city call centres and geographical information systems (GIS).

This high level of control dramatically reduces maintenance and energy costs, and a similar installation in the City of Oslo is expected to reduce energy usage by 50%.

"We are proud to partner with Streetlight.Vision to offer a solution for this important and growing market", said Anders Axelsson, Echelon's Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

"Due to the positive environmental impact, increases in energy prices and, recent EU directives calling for efficient street lighting systems, we believe monitored streetlights will become an effective tool for cities in Europe to save money and energy and help the environment by reducing pollution levels".

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