Cutting energy costs, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and doing something about insect mortality? It's possible! With intelligent street lights and light management in the cloud. A visit to the Birkenfeld Environmental Campus of Trier University of Applied Sciences shows how smart street lighting can be used to combine strategic sustainability policy, intelligent climate protection and regional value creation.
Representatives of the municipality, an LED manufacturer, an IT service provider and the hosting scientists stand on the first German "Zero Emission Campus", the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld of Trier University of Applied Sciences. Here, an ecological construction concept comes together with a CO2-neutral energy and heat supply and state-of-the-art building and plant technology. Teaching also focuses on the environment.
In a record time of three weeks from idea to installation, street and parking lot lights have been converted to LED. Among other things, the lighting units are integrated into a "model street," a kind of open-air laboratory. An intelligent management system makes them smart. What for? Situation-based illumination saves energy, carbon dioxide emissions and costs. Maintenance is carried out according to needs instead of at set intervals.
At the solar carport, the smart LEDs illuminate parking spaces for the disabled and, in the future, also the available spaces at the electric vehicle charging stations. Are these parking spaces occupied by long-term parkers? In such cases, additional sensor technology helps. Dimmed lights become brighter when movements are detected. In the future, learning software will help to react to previously defined movement patterns of people, animals or vehicles.
LEDs can save up to 70 percent energy compared to conventional sodium vapor lamps. Intelligent management can add up to another 20 percent of savings, knows Wolfgang Thömmes of Lanz Manufaktur. The medium-sized company was one of the first in the world to build street lights with LED technology.
Prof. Dr. Peter Heck, Managing Director of the Institute for Applied Material Flow Management (IfaS) at the Environmental Campus, makes this technology the subject of applied practical research. IfaS has set itself the goal of driving sustainable optimization of material flows in practice-oriented projects. For companies, cities and regions.
With a calculation of the light sources, different technologies are made comparable for future illumination. In this way, the energy consumption and the desired illumination can be determined. In addition, the inclination angles of the individual lights for later installation are defined depending on the mast positions.
As a medium-sized company, Lanz Manufaktur has managed to make a mark among the big players with numerous installations worldwide, such as at Freiburg Cathedral, the Kameha Grand Hotel in Bonn, the Shanghai Skyline, and also floodlights at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin and Deutsche Bank Park in Frankfurt.
With centralized light management in the cloud, cities can manage their lights remotely and program "schedules" for illumination: criteria for the start and end of illumination, as well as for brightness depending on location or time. It is possible to have specific illumination of architecturally interesting points as well as color changes. The system shows the operating parameters of the lights.
Each lamp is connected to the light management platform via the machine and sensor network NarrowBand IoT. Connectivity and management software is in the scope of the project partner Deutsche Telekom. For this, a SIM card is inserted either in an internal control device in the light head or in an external device that is attached to the lamp with a simple twist. Conversion sets are available for lights from any manufacturer.
The control device must be registered once in the light management system by scanning a QR code. The transmitted data can also be collected, evaluated and connected to other systems via open interfaces: Via a secure data marketplace, they can be linked with weather data, for example, for conclusions about the dimming level in relation to cloud cover. The data also helps in the further development of lamps - or in research.
Switching to intelligent street lighting paves the way for a municipality to become a "smart city". The light pole is transformed from a basic service into "smart furniture" to which further sensors and solutions can be attached and linked to a management platform. Sensors for recording noise, air quality and traffic are just as much part of the expandable repertoire as WLAN hotspots, cameras or radio base stations. https://t-map.telekom.de/tmap2/mobileiot
