A road in the UK has been fitted with super-smart LED lights to monitor traffic and environmental issues.
The smart street lights can:
- Look for flooded roads or even predict possible flooding.
- Alert motorways to strong winds and predict dangerous driving conditions.
- Measure traffic and dim lights on empty roads.
- Monitor litter on the road.
- Measure air quality and report city conditions.
And of course, lighting.
Councils have assessed the suitability of three sites in Hertfordshire and Essex. The pilot installation began in 2018 and was a collaboration with Cambridge-based technology company Telensa to assess the potential for quality of life and economic benefits of a range of smart city technologies.
Both Essex and Hertfordshire have been early adopters of Telensa’s wireless street lighting controls, which they will pay for in annual savings from reduced energy consumption and maintenance costs. They also found that by tapping into the county-wide lighting network, they could build a low-cost smart city monitoring service.
It’s not just the operational benefits that are efficient, but the monitoring of infrastructure, building up large datasets that can be used to spot problems and potential issues, leading to better decision making and more work.
Will Gibson, founder and commercial director of Telensa, said: “Hertfordshire and Essex are pioneers in smart street lighting and have used Telensa technology to control 250,000 street lights. This project demonstrates the community and financial benefits of adding new sensor applications to the Telensa street light network.”
