Smart LED Street Lights Energy Efficiency and Intelligent Control. Smart city solutions
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LED smart street lights
Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are semiconductor components that emit light when an electric current passes through them. The key technical advantage of LEDs over traditional light sources is their high energy efficiency and longer service life. Lamp replacement remains a relevant issue. According to a review published in the Journal of Sensors in 2022, most existing street lighting networks still use high-pressure sodium (HPS) or metal halide (MH) lamps. HPS lamps have a service life of up to 24,000 hours, which is several times shorter than that of LEDs. Their high energy consumption (up to 400 W), low color rendering index, and mercury and lead content make them an obsolete technology [1].
The transition to LEDs is a fundamental shift. The technological advantage of LEDs lies in their ability to support digital control, enabling the creation of smart lighting networks.
Modernization of street lighting – a requirement of urban development
Electricity providers – for example, the Australian company Ausgrid – identify the modernization of street lighting as a priority. Completed retrofit projects have shown that LED luminaires reduce energy consumption and minimize maintenance costs. At the same time, lighting quality improves thanks to higher brightness and better beam direction. Some Australian luminaires are equipped with smart features for dimming, consumption monitoring, and fault diagnostics. All new LED poles can also be used as platforms for air quality sensors, parking monitoring, and other urban service applications [2].
High energy use and aging infrastructure are the main reasons why municipalities are replacing existing lighting with LEDs. In the context of resource savings, intelligent control systems provide maximum efficiency.
Automation of LED lighting
The deployment of municipal IoT applications requires a compromise between cost and communication range. Short-range technologies such as Wi-Fi are inefficient in terms of energy use, while global systems such as GSM are comparatively expensive for scalable deployment. Low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN) have proven effective, offering low energy consumption and a long coverage radius (up to 5 km). LoRa and NB-IoT are the leading LPWAN technologies used to build smart device networks.
The LiTouch Lite base station is an ultra-compact IoT gateway linking the system core with its periphery. The device supports up to 1,000 nodes, enabling remote control of luminaires via LiTouch controllers and D4i sensors. A 2G/4G mobile network provides the connection to the server platform. With IP66 protection, the gateway is designed for harsh environments and remote configuration.
Conclusion
From simple lighting to intelligent infrastructure
The proposed smart lighting system enables remote operation and adaptive regulation. The light intensity of each luminaire or group of luminaires is modulated depending on the time of day, weather conditions, and the presence of vehicles or pedestrians.
A comparative study launched in Italy in 2018 demonstrated that smart lighting systems with motion and presence sensors deliver up to 82.99% energy savings compared to traditional systems. This is twice the savings achieved by LEDs alone (42.07%) [3]. Such an investment quickly pays for itself.
References
- Smart City: Recent Advances in Intelligent Street Lighting Systems Based on IoT – Amjad Omar, Sara AlMaeeni, Hussain Attia, Maen Takruri, Ahmed Altunaiji, Mihai Sanduleanu, Raed Shubair, Moh’d Sami Ashhab, Maryam Al Ali, Ghaya Al Hebsi
- Ausgrid – LED Streetlight Rollout
- Advanced Adaptive Street Lighting Systems for Smart Cities – Gianfranco Gagliardi, Marco Lupia, Gianni Cario, Francesco Tedesco, Francesco Cicchello Gaccio, Fabrizio Lo Scudo, Alessandro Casavola
