40% of a city’s power consumption comes from public lighting which runs about 650,000 euros per year for a community of 100 000 inhabitants. This mere fact is a selling point for Citylone who is offering communities intelligent controllers that can be installed on lampposts to remotely manage and optimize their public lighting.
Arcom, hitherto a specialist in indoor lighting created the subsidiary Citylone in 2008 to market its systems of street lighting regulation, more commonly called intelligent lighting controllers. These “electronic boxes are placed inside a light or outside on a façade to control the ballast which itself controls the lamp’s illumination,” says Catherine Rambaud, responsible of marketing at Citylone.
Control to optimize
The ballast, the electrical circuit of a lamp, is the crux of the solution. The controllers are connected to the ballast, and uses power line communication on the networking platform LonWorks to transmit information to a remote management center.
Citylone controllers are very simple to install and require no additional wiring. Finally, all data concerning the life of the lamp can be monitored and changed in real time. The main contribution of this type of controller is that it gives the community the key to vary the intensity of its street lights according to the flow of traffic, for an energy savings up to 25 to 30% .
Thus equipped, the public lights can be controlled remotely through the use of software. “Through the remote management software, we will decide what we want to do with each area, street, and light,” says Catherine Rambaud. No need to make any check-up rounds since fault detection is automatic and can also be anticipated.
Equipment adapted to French fixtures
In this area and this growing market, competition is fierce. To stand out, Citylone has developed lighting controllers that have an additional output that can help manage extra services such as CCTV cameras or festive lights, which will also be remotely managed. But the real innovation is that these controllers allow a gradation of light intensity on both ferromagnetic and electronic ballasts. The first is part of the older generation of lights that still outfit a large majority of French streetlamps. Communities can avoid having to change their entire fleet of light fixtures in order to utilize such lighting controllers.
In fact, Citylone has equipped ferromagnetic lamps in a pilot site in the town of Saint-Priest, east of Lyon. The city, whose 7500 lamps consume 3.8 million kWh annually at a cost of 322,500 euros, wanted to focus on their lighting problem. 88 points were fitted with light controllers in 2009 that adjusted their intensity to 70% capacity between 11pm and 5am. In total, the estimated savings per year was close to 22 000 kWh for less than one hundred equipped lamps.
The young company based in Brindas is casting it’s net wider than France. Citylone, which sells its monitors for between 100 and 150 euros each, recently equipped a highway north of Porto with 350 controllers. And hopes to soon supply Spain and Romania with its light controllers.
Crédits photos : Saint-Priest / Citylone
Translated by Genny Cortinovis
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Related content : energy saving, public lighting
