ACT taps Electrix for smart streetlights
The ACT Government has selected streetlight maintenance provider Electrix to upgrade the territory’s streetlight network.
The government is negotiating the terms of a seven-year partnership with the company covering the maintenance, upgrade and power supply of the ACT streetlight network. Negotiations are expected to be finalised by early next year.
Under the new contract, broken lamps will be replaced within two days instead of the current 10, and a significant proportion of streetlights will be upgraded with new LED lamps to replace the oldest and most inefficient incandescent light bulbs.
ACT Minister for Transport and City Services Meegan Fitzharris said the contract will contribute towards the territory’s goal of improving energy and carbon efficiency by 20% by 2020, and support the move towards zero net emissions.
“By the end of this contract the energy consumption of streetlights will be 40% less, which is a great result for a network that currently accounts for 25% of the ACT Government’s electricity use,” she said.
“A new digital control maintenance management system will also be delivered as part of the upgrade. Digital control management systems can offer real-time monitoring of the network and automatically detect faults such as lamp failures or cable problems. This will allow us to fix any fault or outage much sooner and mean fewer problems need to be reported by the public.”
Wellington City Council has meanwhile selected connected street lighting and smart city application developer Telensa to deploy an intelligent streetlighting system for the city.
Telensa will provide its PLANet intelligent street lighting platform for the deployment, which comprises wireless nodes connecting individual lights, a dedicated wireless network and a central management application.
PLANet supports automated fault reporting, provides reduced energy and maintenance costs and uses streetlight poles to support hubs for smart city sensors.
“We’re delighted to be working with Wellington City Council to deliver a more efficient, more resilient streetlighting system that will be responsive to citizens’ needs for decades to come,” Telensa founder and CEO Will Gibson said.
“And we’re looking forward to working together on low-cost smart city applications, enabled by the city’s new lighting network.”
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