Smart city development has become a truly global market, with significant activity in all regions and most countries. Vertical Solar-powered street lighting poles becoming a big part of this industry. With an increasing number of solar street lighting projects, especially in the Middle East, where countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and Oman are trying to build modern and sustainable infrastructure that will be powered with solar energy. New projects show continued investment in open data platforms, EV charging, smart grid technologies, networked LED streetlights, advanced traffic management, energy-efficient buildings, water management, and government service applications for Smart Cities. This assertion is supported by market intelligence firm ABI Research stating that annual global smart street lighting revenue will grow 10-fold to reach $1.7 billion in 2026 with communication solutions based on low—power wide—area (LPWA) network technologies.
US-based smart solar street lighting company EnGoPlanet is specialized in the vertical solar-powered connected street lighting and Smart City data applications market. Nominated for several projects in the USA and the Middle East, where EnGoPlanet worked with reputable clients such as Microsoft and Kuwait Oil Company, these two regions are realizing the benefits of deploying smarter and sustainable streetlight infrastructure.
For most cities across the globe, Streetlights have been the city’s largest non-personnel cost accounting for 60-70% of the city’s utility bill. Converting to LEDs with controls has reduced energy consumption—saving $510,000 annually—reduced maintenance costs by $60,000 annually and removed 5.7 million pounds of CO2 from the environment. The energy savings were achieved by trimming on/off times and adapting for LED output and cleaning. However, many cities and private companies want to go a step further, where they want to have a completely off-the-grid street lighting network. The energy savings in this case would be 100%. In addition, installing solar-powered street lights are a strong statement of the direction one city or country wants to take.
“We live in a data-driven world, but we’re not going to monitor stuff just to monitor it—it has to make sense to the city!” said John White Electrical Engineer in the City of South Princeton. “That’s why we have chosen these vertical Solar powered street lights to open up endless possibilities for us to improve city energy resilience and save money as the dollars can really add up.” Maintenance costs were reduced as connected solar street lighting provides data that enables a more informed response to inquiries and issues, pro-active response to faults, fewer night patrols, and better first time fixes through more effective planning. Light levels were adapted to events in real-time and sensor-based lighting levels could be monitored and managed by the IoT platform.