INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Green Technology

David Webber – Global Public Safety Expert, Huawei Enterprise Business Group, discusses how authorities can start their smart city journeys by implementing connected, energyefficient street lighting.

However, the desire to move a nation( or region or city) higher up the value chain cannot be carried out as a single project. Authorities have to apply a long-term vision and then put in place the programmes and initiatives that are aimed at achieving their objectives. Beyond just looking at cost, cities need to look at what value these investments will bring.

This makes the transition toward becoming a smart city more of a journey with a travel guide, rather than a definite set of projects with fixed budgets and timeframes.

There are low hanging fruit that cities can take advantage of. To see the possibilities, it is important to know where the typical cities of today are burning money in their daily operations and tackling those challenges can improve operational efficiencies and provide dramatic cost savings.

The easiest place where authorities can start is with street lighting, which can fall into

one of two categories: either there is none, but the city would love to install it, or they have existing lighting, but it doesn’ t cover all areas and the infrastructure is expensive to operate and maintain.

Significant energy cost savings

The first change is fairly straightforward, the electricity utility can simply replace old fluorescent bulbs for new LED ones, which use less power and last longer with less maintenance required.

However, the ability for street lights to be part of an intelligent network – just like any other piece of network equipment is capable of, via the copper wire-based electricity network coupled with modern wide area narrow band NB-IoT control communications – is where the real advantages lie for city authorities or utility companies.

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