accounts for 20 to 40 per cent of the total cost
of the operation and maintenance of Norwegian
roads and streets, according to calculations from
the municipalities network road forum for towns
and cities. The City of Oslo alone spends over NOK
60 million on street lighting each year. Modern
technology will allow The City of Oslo gradually
to reduce this item of expenditure. By the end of
November 2012 the first stage of the transition
to new road and street lighting in the capital was
completed. Street lighting controlled by mobile
technology will give taxpayers a continually
improving service at a much lower price.
The old street lights are controlled by photocells
that detect the amount of daylight. They only
have two settings: The light is turned on when
it gets dark and turns off when daylight returns.
According to The City of Oslo this mechanism can
miss the actual need for the lighting of roads and
outdoor spaces in the municipality by about 40
to 45 minutes. The new technology allows lights
to be programmed to follow the sun's path and
light intensity can be adjusted in relation to local
conditions that alter the amount of natural daylight
present.
something goes wrong
There are about 800 control boxes dotted around
Oslo that control the city's 80,000 street lights.
With the new solution these control boxes get new,
high-tech equipment. Equipped with modems and
SIM cards street lights can now be operated from a
website. Thanks to the SIM card the control cabinet
and the management portal are in continual
communication. This enables the municipality to
take immediate action if a fault occurs.
municipality notices that a street light is out of
order. The municipality is dependent either on
tip-offs from the general public or its workers
noticing the fault during inspections when out
and about in the city. Street lights controlled by
mobile technology can themselves recognise
when something is wrong. If a light bulb stops
working a message will immediately be sent to the
management portal via the mobile network and
the municipality can send out a technician to fix
the fault.
get smarter
with m2m
just turning street lighting on and off.
Light intensity can be adjusted at twilight or when it
is foggy or snowing.
benefits even more
The new platform for road and street lighting in
The City of Oslo comprises solutions from the
companies Echelon, Streetlight Vision and Telenor.
The mobile technology adopted by the The City
of Oslo offers the opportunity to install additional
features that will make street lighting even smarter.
In addition to sending a message that a light has
broken the system will also be able to identify
whether the cause is an electrical fault, a burned-
out light bulb or a power failure. In this way the
technicians performing the repair will know in
advance what task they have to perform and can
better determine the extent of repairs needed. It
will also be possible to monitor how many hours
light bulbs have burned, which will enable the
municipality to better predict when the light bulbs
around the city should be replaced. Moreover,
the same infrastructure which is used to control
street lights can also be used for other community
purposes, e.g. for charging stations for electric
vehicles, noise monitoring and CO