Streetlighting is a massive contributor to global warming. Comprising 30-40%, it is also the biggest item on every city’s energy budget. And yet, the only degree of control most cities have of their streetlights are the on/off switch.

Amplex’ GridLight solution for streetlight management has been in operation in Aarhus since 2008. GridLight is a simple but intelligent way of controlling and managing the city’s 59,000 streetlights in order to reduce carbon footprint, improve quality, lower costs and streamline operations.

Before AmpLight

Each control cabinet contained a photocell and a timer. This solution provided no knowledge of the actual electricity consumption or of the state of the installation. It was time-consuming and difficult to maintain and timers tended to get out of sync, turning the lights on too early or too late.

With GridLight

Adding intelligent, low-cost modules in the control cabinets, Aarhus  gained full awareness of their streetlights, and was able to create specific settings for specific geographic areas.

One centrally located photocell ensures that the streetlights are only on when they are needed. Centralising control has gained energy savings of 8%, giving a pay-back time in less than one year.

Now Aarhus is gradually moving into utilizing their Smart City LoRaWAN network, so they are in process of replacing street cabinet controllers with new controllers using LoRaWAN. Further the first individually controlled streetlights has been installed also utilizing LoRaWAN. This will over time be using traffic information to dim the lights when the traffic goes down gaining even larger savings in CO2 and energy costs.