A city is not one lighting network. It is four problems.
Main roads that are over-lit for most of the night, residential streets nobody can see the state of, cabinets that only speak through the bill, and a list of services waiting for an infrastructure that never arrives.
Main road in a municipal network — installed site
Four problems, one network.
They can be taken one at a time. The order below is the one that usually pays for the next step.
The main roads
A few kilometres carry most of the consumption and most of the traffic variation. This is where adaptive operation returns 48 to 51 % beyond the LED.
Adaptive lighting →The rest of the network
Residential streets need visibility more than dimming: energy per luminaire, faults before the phone call, and profiles that respect the class.
Lighting control →The cabinets
Certified metering per line, alarms on protections and doors, switching with local override — including on the stretches that are not connected yet.
Cabinet control →The services
Air quality, noise, traffic counts, water levels, parking. Adding one is adding a sensor to a network that is already there.
City services →Not every street deserves an adaptive system.
On a class M5 residential road the design class is already low, and the measured saving falls to around a quarter. On a main road it is around a half. Any supplier who quotes you one percentage for the whole city has not looked at the city.
What we do instead: take the class of each stretch, the length and the traffic profile, and say which kilometres justify sensors and which only need control. Then the business case is built on the mix, not on the best case.
See a measured case →Pasolini et al., Sensors 24(18):5942, 2024 — study with the University of Bologna and CNIT, Wi4B researchers among the authors.
What changes on Monday morning.
The energy figure convinces the committee. These are the things that convince the maintenance team.
The morning list
Failed drivers, isolated luminaires and tripped protections arrive as a list, with positions — instead of as reports from residents.
Proof for the inspection
Every reduction stored with the measurement that justified it, and a report that leaves as PDF or Excel.
No bill per lamp
The mesh belongs to the city: no SIM and no subscription attached to each luminaire for the next fifteen years.
How a city usually starts.
References available on requestA pilot of a kilometre or two with its own sensors, measured against its own history. Enough to settle the argument with data from your own road.
Extension to the stretches where the class and the traffic justify sensors, usually funded by what the pilot demonstrated.
Control everywhere, cabinets included, and the first city service on the network that is now in every street.
Send us your lighting inventory.
Stretches, classes, number of luminaires and cabinets — even a rough list. We will come back with what is worth doing first and what it would save.