A leading North Wales tech company has won the contract to provide Aberdeen City Council with ‘intelligent’ street lighting.

St Asaph-based Pinacl will deliver an initial 3,500 lighting controllers along with a corresponding LoRaWAN network and lighting Configuration Management System (CMS).

The intelligent street lighting solution will enable the Council to make major savings on its annual street lighting energy consumption and costs while also delivering operational and maintenance efficiencies.

The solution is a ‘quick to install’ system that gives the Council complete control of their street lighting network. It will allow them to intelligently control, dim and monitor light levels via a secure cloud-based CMS.

The solution will enable the Council to cut maintenance costs with real-time fault monitoring and by using detailed operational intelligence to improve day-to-day effectiveness and planning.

Aberdeen has invested in a £9.7million eight year rolling programme of replacing the old inefficient and expensive street lighting with more efficient and cost-effective LED lighting.

Aberdeen City Council Energy costs for street lighting as of December 2015 were just under £2million per year. This will fall to less than £800,000 per year after all the street lighting has been replaced with LED lanterns. The project delivers over 60% reduction in street lighting electricity bills after completion of the LED replacement project.

Pinacl is collaborating with Lucy Zodion, a leader in the design and manufacture of smart street lighting equipment with over 10 years' experience developing intelligent street lighting solutions for smarter cities.

This collaboration combines Pinacl’s knowledge and expertise in the Internet of Things (IoT) with Lucy Zodion’s expertise and leadership in intelligent street lighting.

Alasdair Rettie, Technical Director at Pinacl, said:

“We are delighted to be working with Aberdeen to help them achieve their Smart City vision. This IoT project lets us build on our relationship with the Council which began with the design and installation of a city wide public WiFi network and the expansion of the Councils fibre network.

“The new city-wide IoT network provides a third layer of connectivity that will allow Aberdeen City council to efficiently deploy a variety of Smart City Solutions across the city.”

Councillor John Wheeler, of Aberdeen City Council, said:

“We are at the forefront of transforming the digital infrastructure in Aberdeen which will bring benefits not only to the council through savings, but also to residents by being smarter about getting our lights repaired.”

In addition to saving money the new LED lighting gives out a bright, clear light which is easier to the human eye, provides improved safety for pedestrians and clearer pictures for CCTV footage. The replacement LEDs also offer an increased lifetime over the legacy HID sodium lamps (x6) and fluorescent lamps (x4). They are also ‘greener’ – more recyclable (up to 90%) and they contain no mercury, lead or heavy metal and emit no UV radiation.

At present, the photocell will switch on the street light at a pre-set value (at dusk) and it will switch the light off again at another pre-set value (at dawn). The street light is either on, at full power, or off.

Enhancing existing street lighting infrastructure with a LoRaWAN enabled ecosystem helps Local Authorities control and monitor their entire system remotely and more intuitively.