Will Street Lights Become the Nodes of the Networked City?
Will Street Lights Become the Nodes of the Networked City?
Echelon, Osram and the smart street light network
JEFF ST. JOHN: APRIL 11, 2013
Networked street lights are a fascinating space where the latest in city-scale, energyefficient lighting and digital networking combine. Weve seen a ton of new entrants into the field, from smart meter players like Sensus, Silver Spring Networks (SSNI) and ABBs Tropos Networks adding streetlights to their mix of networked end-points, to LED contenders working with cities and contractors to tap the extra efficiency and functionality inherent in those digital sources of light.
On Wednesday, lighting giant and Siemens subsidiary (and would-be spinoff) Osram announced it was launching its own networked street lighting solution, using technology from San Jose, Calif.-based networked street lighting stalwart Echelon (ELON). The Osram-Echelon combo promises to squeeze up to 40 percent more energy efficiency out of a city or utility street light system, compared to just using high-efficiency lamps alone.
For Echelon, its a big new partner for a powerline carrier (PLC) technology thats been connecting streetlights to central control systems for more than a decade. Echelons system connects about 1 million street lights around the world, running city lighting networks in locations from Anchorage, Alaska to Oslo, Norway, and points in between. In China alone, the company is hoping to install 500,000 smart street lights by 2014.
Echelon has been working with Philips on networked street lighting for some time, as well as many other smaller partners in the complicated lighting industry chain, Varun Nagaraj, Echelons senior vice president and general manager, told me in a Wednesday interview.
In the case of Osram...
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