Chicago’s Smart Street Lighting

Chicago has initiated a $160 million largest city-led wireless smart street lighting project in the US in collaboration with Ameresco to achieve a greener city and provide clearer and more reliable nighttime lighting in every neighborhood. It has 280 street lighting fixtures with smart models for improved energy efficiency and smart city use cases.

Smart lighting management makes operations more efficient and helps the workforce to respond to outages more quickly when they occur. 80% of lighting is being replaced and the new lights are expected to use 50-75% less electricity. This will help the city halve its energy costs, saving $12.4 million in electricity costs this year alone and over $100 million over the next ten years.

LEDs also reduce maintenance costs and the necessity to invest in new lights within a short time. They last two to three times as long as traditional High-Pressure Sodium (HPS) lights. Street-lighting complaints have already fallen to less than 1%. This initiative drives financial benefits, improves public safety in Chicago by providing higher quality, more reliable lighting as well as helps the city reduce its carbon footprint.

Within the next decade, smart streetlight penetration will reach 35% in the U.S. This translates to an annual market that ranges from 600,000 to 1.5 million units per year.

“ FORCE ” can be installed at the energy units of the street lights and save an excess of 5-15% of energy usage.

This can save a lot of electricity usage for the government, individual homes, and communities and can also control carbon emissions and carbon footprints. As an add-on to your savings plan, a FORCE power-saving device can be a better option because it saves excess energy usage and helps in steady current flow.