Echelon Helps Romanian City Revamp Street Lighting Infrastructure

The deployment of intelligent streetlights is fast becoming a critical mandate for governments around the world. The Romanian city of Brasov has decided to reap the cost and efficiency benefits from investing in smart street lighting infrastructure, selecting Echelon’s energy control technology for the deployment of smart, networked street lighting systems in the city over the next three years.

 

In a press release, Echelon said that the city authorities had undertaken a year-long test of the technology, leading to a 28 percent drop in energy bills and 40 percent in maintenance costs for the neighborhood where the testing had been conducted. Brasov reportedly achieved more control over its streetlights and gained the ability to efficiently distribute power to other applications on the grid.

           

“We couldn't be more pleased with the early results of our new street lighting deployment. We have cut our energy costs by nearly 30 percent without even changing the existing lamps or ballasts. Based on this success, our plan over the next three years is to deploy this solution for the entire Brasov street lighting system, which includes 18,000 luminaries,” said Miklos Gantz, vice-mayor of Brasov, in a statement, while praising the technology.

 

Under the contract, Echelon's Romanian partner, Flashnet, was given the responsibility to build the intelliLIGHT system by combining Echelon's power line transceivers at every light, Echelon's SmartServers for segment control and enterprise connectivity, and Flashnet's central management software. The system integrates electromagnetic as well as electronic ballast control. With this, Brasov was able to switch from its dated street lighting system to an extremely energy efficient infrastructure.

 

The integrated system has transformed Brasov’s street lighting network into a multi-functional energy control network. The system uniquely allows the authorities to take control decisions closer to streets through the system's central control software that gives individual control and feedback from the luminaries. This improves efforts to balance and control power use and ensure uninterrupted power supply for other applications such as video surveillance and Wi-Fi access points. Prior to implementing Echelon's technology, these other applications needed to be switched off along with the street lights.

 

The city can also use the street lighting grid to supply energy day and night to different applications – without adding new wiring.

 

Earlier this month, Echelon announced that its Edge Control Node (ECN) obtained Verizon (News - Alert) 3G certification.

 

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Madhubanti Rudra is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by John Lahtinen