Smart street lighting can deliver better outcomes

Smart street lighting can deliver better outcomes

Street lighting management consultancy, Strategic Lighting Partners, strongly endorses calls to establish an expert panel to examine street lighting options for Dunedin that will take account of all the city’s needs.

Strategic Lighting Partners Director Bryan King says, “Street lighting is a public service that has a diverse range of interest groups and it is important to ensure that the needs and preferences of all relevant groups are heeded and balanced.”

He says, “ Street lighting technologies have been through a total transformation in recent years and there are major safety, economic, tourism and environmental advantages available from the well-considered deployment of modern techniques.The outcomes for dark skies and for tourism do not need to be impaired and astute deployment of modern technologies may well enhance the interests of these parties.” “Modern street lighting design is about providing the right light, at the right place, at the right time. Well-designed LEDs with smart control systems can deliver this and save a great deal of energy and money at the same time” says Bryan King, who is a member of the Australia/New Zealand standards committee for street lighting and a member of the International Electrotechnical Commission standards committee for street lights.

“LED street lights with affordable internet based smart control systems can switch public lighting on or off at will, or adjust light levels up-or-down, location-by-location exactly in accord with the needs of public safety and security while also achieving lower overall environmental impacts”.

“Most LED street lights have “full cut-off” optics where, unlike most traditional streetlights, the proportion of direct spill light pointing skywards is greatly minimised. Additionally, warm white light LED options are now available that are more dark-skies friendly than the earlier generation of cool white light LEDs. With the use of best practice technology and design, there is no need for the attainment of safety and economic benefits for ratepayers to be at the expense of poor environmental outcomes”.

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