Smart lighting is the key enabler for a “vibrant and sustainable” city

It enables different lighting scenes by adjusting the light levels for individual street lights, says Prag Bhatnagar, Senior Vice President, Havells India.

In the Smart City India initiative so far, what are some of the novel examples of smart lighting?
Smart lighting is the key enabler for a “Vibrant and Sustainable” city. Smart lighting enables different lighting scenes by adjusting the light levels for individual street lights. This system can adapt the light scenes created through programmed colour tenability as required for commuting during the early morning, evening rush hour or leisure activities at weekend evenings. Smart lights can adapt by the dimming of lights when there are no people around or by lighting up the area when people are present to create a pleasant atmosphere. By colour tunability, Smart lighting can create an inviting light scene to attract people to enjoy life. Also, when the situation becomes busy, it (smart lighting) gears up for a higher lighting level enabling surveillance of the crowd for security reasons. Hence, I can say Smart lighting provides the service to create the right ambience for any moment in a city. Havells Lighting has already created similar evidence of the same as per the customer requirement in Ludhiana Smart City and Faridabad Smart City project.

What exactly makes lighting “smart”? What kind of technologies come into play? 
The ability of lighting to adapt to varying situations by sensing the same makes the lighting smart. The smart lighting also could sense the health of its system and update when it requires preventive maintenance. Many possible technologies can be used to make lighting “smart”. Havells Smart Lighting Solution is based on usage of radio frequency for individual control and monitoring of lights which is two-way communication with each other and, providing data to a local gateway. The gateway manages and transmits the relevant data to the server and presents it in a software dashboard for monitoring. 

Apart from cities and municipalities, how does this concept help the grid operators or private partners? 
Smart lighting offers a host of benefits to cities, municipalities as also the operators, some of these are  

Easy control and monitoring: 
• Remotely on and off, scheduled on and off and dimming. 
• Individual and group control possible as per the requirement. 
• Real-time energy monitoring and analysis.  

Security and safety: 
• Antitheft alert messages and alarms. 
• Breakdown alerts, repair and redressal immediately. 
• Encrypted data communication, safe and secure. 

Operations ease: 
• Real-time problem recognition. 
• Interface with geo maps. 
• Schedules for preventive maintenance. 
• Integration with other smart city utilities 

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