Springtime streets are always filled with beautiful flowers, pedestrians strolling under the shade of trees, and bright billboards flashing by as drivers drive by—all contributing to the city's picturesque scenery. But have any of you, like me, noticed the streetlights that don't work during the day?
When your phone dies outside and you're looking for a power bank on the street, have you ever thought about charging it under a streetlight?
When you're looking for a parking space, have you ever considered using streetlights to indicate available parking spots?
When you want to know your location but have to turn on your phone and connect to GPS to search, have you ever thought about having a nearby streetlight quickly announce your location?
When you want to pay for parking with your phone but have no signal, have you ever thought about connecting to the Wi-Fi of a street lamp?
Smart streetlights in various regions already have these interesting functions
After several years of implementation and operation, various smart streetlights are now available around the world. In the Zhangjiang Software Park in Pudong, Shanghai, smart streetlights can achieve energy savings and PM2.5 monitoring. Also in Pudong, Shanghai, over 40 smart light poles have been introduced, which can monitor the movement of people entering and leaving the park.
(Figure 1, sourced from the internet)
The first batch of light poles in Beijing can be used to charge electric vehicles.
(Figure 2, sourced from the internet)
In Los Angeles, more than 200,000 smart streetlights are equipped with the Internet of Things (IoT) to detect vehicle collisions, helping police, fire, and emergency services shorten response times.
(Figure 3, sourced from the internet)
In Paris, smart streetlights can charge pedestrians' phones; in Las Vegas, the streetlight power supply network also incorporates solar and kinetic energy, generating electricity from pedestrians' footsteps, allowing the entire plaza to be completely off-grid.
(Figure 4, sourced from the internet)
These ingenious smart streetlights bring new vitality to the city.
In April 2016, the World Economic Forum, in its report "Inspiring the Cities and Services of the Future: Taking the Initiative in Urban Development and Services," pointed out that one model for future urban transformation is the "revitalization of public assets." Using streetlights as an example, the report indicated that cities are transforming these resource-consuming "dead assets" into assets that can attract substantial revenue through value-added services (such as sensing surrounding air quality, weather, and parking spaces). These services, coupled with digital advertising platforms, allow cities to fully utilize unused assets to provide their original functions in a more economical and environmentally sustainable way.
(Figure 5, sourced from the internet)
Smart streetlights are a key application area for the Internet of Things (IoT) in cities. Most countries, when planning smart cities, consider smart streetlights as an essential infrastructure for IoT due to their power supply, network connectivity, and wide deployment. The potential for added value applications is limitless. Smart streetlights transmit collected data and information to a "smart lighting software system platform," which serves as the management backend, enabling core smart city management functions such as smart lighting, smart transportation, wireless city solutions, and information dissemination within a big data interactive environment.
(Figure 6, sourced from the internet)
The smart street light system mainly consists of three parts: front-end equipment, network transmission, and management platform.
1. The smart street light pole integrates front-end equipment such as video surveillance, LEDs, broadcasting, environmental monitoring instruments, and alarms.
2. The network transmission layer uses a dedicated smart street light pole gateway from Jixun IoT to complete data collection and transmission via wireless network, sending the data to the management center.
3. The center performs data analysis, processing, and monitoring, and remotely configures, maintains, and issues commands to the equipment.
Smart streetlights offer a wide range of functions, but they also have specific power requirements for the system.
Because people envision smart streetlights as multi-functional and versatile, the increased number of peripherals and environmental interference compared to traditional streetlights significantly increases the reliability risks of power supply and communication modules. Therefore, considering the limitations of outdoor applications for smart streetlights, the key considerations for power supply module applications are summarized below.
(1) Smart streetlights are located outdoors in harsh environments and are prone to environmental problems such as grid voltage fluctuations, humidity, and lightning. They have certain requirements for power supply performance, such as wide input voltage range, moisture resistance, and high surge pulse level.
(2) Installation and maintenance should be convenient, and there are certain requirements for the installation structure and size of the power supply, such as AC/DC dual-use and compact size.
(3) Due to the large differences in regional environment, the working temperature range is required to be wider, such as -30℃ to +70℃.
(4) In the initial stage of development, the industry has certain requirements for cost and pursues cost-effectiveness.
Once the requirements are clear, how do we choose the right power supply solution to match our needs? Let's take the following application as an example.
This solution uses Mornsun's "305 All-Condition" chassis switching power supply as the main power supply, which can power information display screens and video surveillance units. The "305 All-Condition AC/DC Power Supply" is a new industrial standard power supply proposed by Mornsun. This series of products is characterized by an ultra-wide input voltage range of 85-305VAC, and overvoltage level III (compliant with EN61558).
The control motherboard, 485 and 4G modules, and other peripheral units are powered by the LD30-23B05R2 modular power supply, which features a wide voltage input of 85-305VAC, small size, voltage regulation, and high reliability. It also meets the certifications/standards of IEC/EN/UL62368, EN60335, and EN61558.
The future of smart streetlights remains promising.
Driven by the construction of new smart cities and the commercialization of 5G, relevant incentive policies have been introduced one after another, and development is accelerating. It is expected that multi-functional streetlights will achieve breakthrough growth in my country in the next two to three years. Module standardization, style diversification, and professional configuration are the future development directions for multi-functional streetlights. However, there are still a series of challenges to face, such as cost reduction and technological improvement, as well as business models that need further exploration and solutions. Large-scale application is still some distance away. What other functions can smart streetlights be developed? What will life be like with smart streetlights throughout the city? Let's wait and see!
