Expected benefits are related to reduce the energy needs of the public lighting due to a higher efficient system, leading to a reduction in GHG emissions, while enhancing stability of the urban infrastructure. It also contributes to improve air quality thanks to the lower emissions, and a reduction of road danger thanks to the better street lighting. It can also benefit the attractiveness of the cities, higher citizen connectivity (smart lighting - WiFi) and a reduction in future maintenance costs.

Smart street lighting can be integrated with EV or e-bikes charging infrastructure, as well as it can form a bundle with other urban solutions at district or city level (e.g. Nearly zero/ Positive Energy District).

Urban form and layout:

It is very relevant to take the urban form and density, as well as mobility paths into account especially for the implementation of street lighting including functionalities such as traffic sensors, cameras, charging stations, Wi-Fi, 5G, as well as if adaptive lighting are needed.

Technical aspects/ infrastructure:

It is needed to properly select the most appropriate type of smart urban lamppost, according to the needs of the city (cross-departmental, cross-sectoral, benefits are not only related to lighting) and what the different models offer. For the implementation, it is needed to establish the plan to replace and update the lighting stock at volumes that will not fully engage the supply base. It is crucial also, for the feature of monitor or gathering data (e.g. mobility data, environmental data: air quality), that communication protocols, data gathering among other things are well defined.

Funding and financing:

Business model and financing options to be checked-out before the implementation, they can help the team in making decisions about this that deliver the scale and potential that it can. A good strategy can be to have a plan that every time a lamppost is broken or needs to be replaced, the smart lighting humble lamppost is installed, which reduces the payback period significantly (as you need to install a new lamppost anyway).

Project governance and implementation modalities:

It is needed an integrated city approach (Smart City strategy), since the smart street lighting has a lot more potential functions that just providing light. E.g. data strategy, mobility plans (it may be used for improving pedestrian and bicycle connections in addition to charging stations feature), public safety and security (e.g. traffic safety strategy: lights dim in some areas according to a schedule, but sensors enable lights to brighten when cyclists approach unsafe road junctions), health strategy (e.g. they can be used to implement crowd control measures).

Barriers of collaboration locally between departments (lighting, roads, health, etc. – all of whom could stand to benefit), between cities typically locally; and between city-clusters on an international basis. As well as between public sector, industry and potential financiers – all of whom view the opportunity from very different perspectives.

Other barriers are related to the ownership of lampposts and operational contracts, due to the fact that most of the cities owned their lampposts, and following questions (among others) should be solved in advance: ‘Who provides the power to the lamppost?’, ‘Who is paying for the lights?’, ‘Who is going to pay for all of it?’

Some cities (such as Barcelona) has a number of specially protected heritage sites, so they need to ensure that the technology they deploy in public space is not in conflict with the landscape (lamppost designs need to blend into the landscape, e.g. without lots of wires hanging out…).

In the case of Copenhagen, they set up incentives to lower energy consumption with a city goal for 70% reduction, but these outdo incentives use the IoT network installed in the lampposts as using the network drives up consumption.

If new smart lamppost looks like the conventional city lampposts and uses the same material, this will keep costs low, as if the construction is the same as every other lamppost, we can use the same machines to build them and have no problem with standards or power supplies in the ground. It was done this way in Munich. Yet, the installation of these smart lampposts is really expensive.

Time: In Munich, it took them one and a half years to install this infrastructure from the moment they planned it to installation. The construction took a while to do.

Reference of the text:

• Humble Lamppost Whitepaper report: https://smart-cities-marketplace.ec.europa.eu/media/248. It includes Case Studies from Barcelona, Spain; Copenhagen, Denmark; Munich, Germany; Los Angeles, USA; City of Westminster, London, UK; Singapore
• Exploiting the ‘humble lamp post’, a kick start to smart city – A guide for city leaders

• La renovation de l’Eclairage (Smart Building Alliance, 2020)

Energy efficient LED street lighting can offer substantial (up to 50%) savings on energy consumption.

The smart street lighting system uses sensors on light poles, which enables them to detect. Wireless movement network to connect sensors, collect data and control remotely; It can generate more than 70% secondary energy saving. 

Carbon emissions abatement, source: GSMA

DNSH:

Climate change mitigation:

The construction/implementation of the lamppost can lead to a significant greenhouse gas emissions on a lifecycle basis

Circular economy:

Second life materials use for the construction of the lamppost are highly recommended, so as to not harm this activity.

• User Engagement for Energy Performance Improvement : https://netzerocities.app/resource-14988
• Loans for Energy Efficiency (EE): https://netzerocities.app/resource-16488
• Blended finance for Energy Efficiency (EE): https://netzerocities.app/resource-1658
• Integrated land use and urban planning with energy and climate: https://netzerocities.app/resource-1678
• Integrated land use planning and urban space management with mobility planning: https://netzerocities.app/resource-1688
• Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI): https://netzerocities.app/resource-1758
• Mobility Management: https://netzerocities.app/resource-1768

mySMARTLife intervention in Hamburg:

• Design and implementation of adaptive lighting concept
• Design and implementation of the humble lampposts concept

Hello Lamp Post concept in Bristol, UK, for citizen engagement

In some cases, smart streetlighting can give rise to concerns among city residents, resulting in them not being supportive. They may have privacy concerns related to the combination of other applications with smart streetlighting (e.g. security cameras).

To counteract this, cities are consulting and engaging with residents; for example, Eindhoven in the Netherlands involved residents in the development of its smart streetlighting project, giving them the ability to suggest functionalities and preferences.