StreetLightNews

In Menasha, Wisconsin, an energy saving proposal was approved last week. With a no-interest loan from the city-owned utility’s power suppplier, WPPI, they expect a fast payback based on annual energy savings.

According to Don Merkes, Mayor in Menasha, the project has the potential of saving $60,000 annually, divided between energy savings from new bulbs and savings on maintenance.

If the calculations are correct, the payback will be les than three years.

The article does not mention whether the city is also planning on installing a centralized control solution.

Read more in the local newspaper here.

A 50/50 consortium between Skanska and John Laing has been appointed Preferred Bidder for a streetlight PFI scheme in Surrey, UK.The GBP 74 million project encompasses the design, build, finance and operation of all streetlights in Surrey over the next 25 years.

Within the first five years, Skanska is expected to replace 70,000 streetlights and refurbish another 18,000 lighting columns.

Using new energy-efficient equipment, the carbon impact of delivering street lighting services will be reduced.

See more here. 

By proposing to remove 200 streetlights throughout the community, the Street Light Committee of Kennebunk, Maine, expects to save $20,000 annually.This proposal has spurred a great deal of discussion amongt local citizens, who believe that public safety is being compromised. (Source: seacoastonline.com).Many other communities have faced hikes in electricity rates without having to actually turn off the lights. Replacing old fixtures or even installing a more advanced, central control solution, would pay for itself over a relatively small period of time.Surprisingly, many streetlight committees seem to have very short horizons. Instead of working on a permanent solution that cuts costs, they often choose the short-sighted way.

As part of a 17-point plan to make Phoenix the greenest city in America, mayor Phil Gordon has announced that the city will be testing LED streetlights on a small segment of its streets.

Having advanced their current streetlight installations as far as they can, this initiative offers a way of lowering energy consumption even further.

Read more about the 17 point plan here.

In Vietnam, authorities are working on a draft law on improving and streamlining energy use. Currently, the country wastes an estimated US$ 1 million worth of energy every day due to inefficient energy usage.

Putting this money towards solutions in the LV grid such as substation monitoring and intelligent streetlight control would be a simple and fast way of installing energy saving solutions that pay for themselves relatively fast.

In Ho Chi Minh City, energy saving measures within streetlight have had a significant impact on the city’s CO₂ emissions. In the first half of 2009, Ho Chi Minh City has saved approximately 114.8 million kWh of electricity, according to the Director of the municipal Energy Conservation Center (ECC), Huynh Kim Tuoc.

In 2008, the city replaced 131,000 incandescent bulbs with more energy efficient bulbs, saving 220 million kWh.

The city expects to replace the remaining 200,000 incandescent bulbs by the compact bulbs by next year for the local public lighting.

Individual talks and strategic sessions with the key players in the lighting industry has led to the conclusion that the timing for the upcoming Light Middle East edition, which was to be held at the Dubai International Convention & Exhibition Centre from September 27-29, 2009, would instead be preferred in autumn 2010. Exact dates will follow.

The free social messaging tool, Twitter, now enables San Francisco residents to reach the government customer service centre. According to San Francisco’s Chief Information Officer, Chris Vein, the city is the first city in the world to use Twitter on such a large scale to communicate with its residents.

Other than contacting the centre through traditional media such as phone or the centre’s website, citizens can now send a request on Twitter via SMS, IM or the Twitter website. Requests include streetlight repair among several others. It is possible for the residents to attach photos or links in their tweets allowing the centre to easier identify the location or problem being reported.

Other organisations are also beginning to use the same technology. Kissimmee Utility Authority now relies on its customers to help identify  street lights that are malfunctioning or in need of repair. With more than 15,000 street lights to maintain, the utility benefits from outage reports sent using the micro-blogging service Twitter. The utility asks that the tweet includes light pole number, the nearest address or major cross, a contact phone number and the phrase #kuaalerts.

Founded in 1901, KUA (www.kua.com) is Florida’s sixth largest community-owned utility providing electric and telecommunication services to 62,000 customers in Osceola County, Florida.

Gloucestershire County has set a fine example by the ‘invest to save’ scheme, where the county’s street lights are dimmed or switched off for part of the night. The scheme is held up as an example of how UK councils can reduce their carbon footprint.

The county estimates it will obtain annual savings of about £210,000 and cut CO2 emissions by 28 percent by dimming and switching off its street lights. Many of the high wattage street lights are dimmed between midnight and 5:30 a.m., and in the rural areas and market towns some of the street lights are turned off during the same period.

Gloucestershire County Council is already generating savings, and when the project of converting the rest of the county’s street lights is completed, it will reduce carbon emissions by 400 tonnes - the equivalent of boiling 26 million kettles.

StreetLightNews recently met up with Nønne Holm Carlsen for a brief discussion on pros and cons regarding centralised (control cabinet) and decentralised (pole) streetlight management. Nønne Holm Carlsen is Communications Manager at Amplex A/S, a Danish company that work with utility intelligence.

But where does the company stand when it comes to its streetlight solutions? Do they prefer implementing intelligent communication devices and photo cells in each streetlight pole? This provides exact knowledge about every pole, but is expensive and time-consuming to install. Or does Amplex recommend the control cabinet solution with less precise knowledge but fast and low-cost in terms of installation and maintenance. Read on to find out.

What kind of streetlight solution does Amplex offer its clients?

- We offer both a circuit solution built into the control cabinets, and a pole-based solution. We do recommend the control cabinet solution because of the fast and low-cost installation process and because this solution will most often provide adequate knowledge and control. However, we do realize that individual control over certain geographic areas can be necessary. That is why we offer  a combined solution, allowing the client to control individual poles near hospitals, public buildings and other important areas.

How is Amplex different from its competitors?

- We focus on streetlight as part of a Smart Grid solution. We add intelligence to the LV network, and in combination with knowledge generated from feeder pillars and substations, we gain a far more detailed overview of all loads and assets in the grid, including smart meters. We also have the advantage of being market leaders. We control more than 5 million streetlights worldwide. Of these 5 million streetlights, we control 275,000 light points with a circuit, control cabinet solution in one project in the Middle East.

What if the customer wants more exact knowledge about the individual streetlights?

- Then we will recommend our pole-based solution. But with our less expensive, basic solution, we do register the number of burn-hours, allowing precisely scheduled maintenance efforts. And if a certain percentage of streetlights within one segment are mal-functioning, we do get an alarm that tells us about the problem, Nønne Holm Carlsen concludes.

‘If the ten largest cities in the United States converted to the Amplex street light management system it would correspond to removing 212,000 cars from the roads - in pure CO2 savings.’ This promising perspective is offered by Danish company Amplex which specialises in energy-saving systems to manage street lighting. The company is an example of the many already registered companies participating in the climate-related parallel events that will take place during the COP 15 Conference.

The world is now gearing up for the coming COP 15 Conference in the Bella Center in Copenhagen where the overall goal is to enter into an international post-Kyoto climate agreement, which involves as many countries as possible. The COP 15 Conference is the fifteenth Conference of the Parties under the United Nations’ Climate Change Convention.

For two weeks, from December 7-18 2009, about 12,000 decision makers, NGO’s and journalists from more than 200 different countries will meet to discuss the future course of the planet. If President Barack Obama is going to participate in the conference, the organisers are expecting an even more impressive turnout, thus counting about 18,000 visitors.

Even though the actual conference is closed to the general public, a lot of climate-related parallel and side events, which are accessible to everyone, will take place before, during, and after the conference. The premiere business event parallel to COP 15 is the Bright Green Exhibition & Conference which is hosted by the Confederation of Danish Industry (DI) on December 12-13.

The highly profiled exhibition is currently in the process of inviting various environmental advocates. Among these are Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and U2 lead singer Bono. It will be like visiting a gallery of climate solutions, and the idea is to combine elements from art, architecture, showbiz, and trade fairs.