City set to get smart street lights soon

Prayagraj: Soon, the 60,000 odd street lights of Sangam city would switch on and off at the same moment. To turn this idea into a reality, the authorities are all set to install a light-based group controller following which the lights would be switched on and off automatically at the same time.
As part of the Prayagraj Smart City project, all the street lights, installed at the main roads, dividers and by-lanes of different localities of the city, would be controlled by these smart sensors and their monitoring system would be connected to the Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) at Prayagraj Mela Authority office. The important change in the operation of these street lights to their smarter versions will reduce power wastage and authorities would be able to save up to Rs 5 crore of yearly expenditure. Besides, authorities would also be able to save electricity. As per the present practice, the street lights of different localities of the city are installed and maintained by the Prayagraj Municipal Corporation (PMC) and a local person is deputed to switch on the lights at a given time in the evening and the same person switches it off in the morning.
However, despite posting a person for operating these lights, often some of the street lights could be spotted switched on even in the daytime in different localities.
However, after the new system is put in place, the street lights of the entire city will light up and go out simultaneously. There will be no switchmen to switch on the lights and at the same time, there would be no need to supervise the staff deputed to operate these street lights.
“The proposed smart lighting system will reduce the cost of thousands of units of electricity per day which otherwise goes wasted when these lights are not switched off during day time," says a senior engineer of PMC, associated with the project. The arrangement is being made in such a way that as soon as the sun sets, the street lights would switch on and would go off with sunrise.
There would be ‘group control’ units installed between a bunch of lights, which would be decided based on power consumption load. Authorities can feed a particular timing for switching the street lights on and off from these control units, all of which would be connected to ICCC.
Information including unit of electricity consumed, fault if any, load etc would be centrally monitored under this smart lighting system. Now that the electricity department is installing meters at street lights, PMC has to pay the electricity bills for street lights and as such this system would also save money for PMC.
“The department has installed meters at almost all the streets lights under Mayo Hall division, around 80 per cent of Gorge Town, 30 per cent in Bamrauli etc. and soon the power consumption by street lights of the entire city would be metred,” said SDO, Bamrauli, Pradeep Gupta.