Types of smart streetlight systems
There are 2 main categories for our smart streetlight solutions:
- Group Level Streetlight Control
- Individual Lamp Level Control
Smart streetlights with group level controls
Group level smart streetlight systems are those that are controller by feeder pillars. Feeder pillar are electrical junction points that control the supply of electricity to a group lights. Group control light systems can be made smart by placing a control circuit in each feeder pillar. These control circuits can turn on/off streetlights automatically as well as measure energy consumed by this group of lights.
Faults in streetlights are identified by change in energy consumption load. Group level control system do not offer brightness control or dimming streetlights as such. However, with LUCI(Light Universal Control Instrument) which can act as a control circuit for feeder pillars as well as an individual light controllers. Some lights can be made dimmable even when implementing a group level control system.
Group level control streetlight systems are highly cost effective and very quick to implement. With just a few control circuits an entire area's street lighting system can be converted to a smart street lighting system with live fault monitoring.
This system uses GSM based control units to switch on / switch off a group of streetlights together using a electrical contactor. Each switching point can control from 100-500 streetlights. These switching points are also called Feeder Pillars.
LUCI is a flagship product from AHOY and can be used a control circuit to make a smart feeder pillar and smart street lighting system.
GLC Group Level Control - Use case
As a sample use case, a small town with 12,000 streetlights has 100 feeder pillars. If this town has a LoRaWAN network available, then group level control(GLC) based smart street-lighting can be implemented using 100 LUCI devices for single phase feeder pillars or 100 LUCI-HUB devices for 3-phase feeder pillars. If no LoRaWAN network is available, the LUCI-4G or LUCI-HUB-4G should be used as control circuits. Some electrical equipment such as contactors, energy meters and a software subscription to LiteCloud will also be required for 100 devices.Other smart streetlight products for Group Level Control System
Depending on what is possible in your geographic location, we have several cost effective Group Level control systems available. Please write to us using the contact form to know more about each of our products and a solution design.
- Streetlight gateway device (2G)
- Streetlight gateway device (4G)
- Streetlight gateway device (2G+LoRa)
- Streetlight gateway device (Dual 2G+LoRa)
- Streetlight gateway device (4G+LoRa)
- Modbus Relay Board(MRB) device
Smart Streetlight with individual lamp control
Individual Light Control Systems require a unique addressable ID for each streetlight. Once an ID is associated with a streetlight, then everything about that streetlight can be monitored, controlled and tracked. Just like social security numbers[g].
In order to assign an ID, a LUCI(Light Universal Control Instrument) can be installed on each streetlight. This instrument can communicate with the Streetlight CCMS Software system and allow you maintain a high performing street light deployment through out a city. LUCI is available for LoRaWAn, LoRa, Modbus, 2G and Wifi telemetry networks.
If a particular streetlight stops working, then that fault can be immediately reported to a Streetlight CCMS SoftwareSmart Streetlight Systems comparison
Streetlight Feeder Pillar
A feeder pillar is an electrical cabinet that receives grid supply and then supplies it to control several streetlights. Each feeder pillar usually requires the following components
- An energy meter - To record the consumption of electricity to the streetlight poles fed from this pillar
- Digital Contactors - To control flow of electricity into streetlight poles
- Manual override switches - To carryout repair work in streetlight poles
- A controller circuit - This circuit controls Group On/Off, energy consumption recording etc.