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Cleveland to convert streetlights into smart LED network

The city of Cleveland is undergoing a major lighting upgrade that will see 61,000 lights get LEDs and remote control in a $35m project called Smart, Safe CLE.

Cleveland and ST Engineering Telematics Wireless are currently working on a plan to convert the city’s 61,000 street lights into a smart network, which will take about 18 months to complete.

The project has the potential to reduce annual streetlight operating costs by as much as 20%. The standard street light bulbs will be replaced by LEDs, which could cut the city’s annual electric bill by another 50%.

In Los Angeles, the city began swapping out all of its old sodium-vapour streetlights with LEDs and by 2016, with 80% of the lights replaced, the city was saving nearly $9m annually on energy costs.

In addition to saving money, this new network will provide a backbone that can be used for other smart city projects.

Telematics installed a T-Light Galaxy Network which provides web-based control of the light fixtures and the network. This wide-area network uses a single base station to cover an area of up to 20km radius and monitors up to 50,000 lights.

The company’s BrightCity software controls the operation of each streetlight and allows lights to be set at different intensities for residential, commercial and industrial locations. In addition to converting the streetlights, Telematics will install 1,000 cameras to be operated by the Cleveland Police Department in locations identified by the police as crime hotspots, as well as within 300m of recreation centres and parks.

Telematics also will install three gateways to cover the entire city’s network of streetlights, and a fourth gateway is planned for city-wide redundant coverage.