Electricity + Control April 2016

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ENERGY + ENVIROFICIENCY: FOCUS ON LIGHTING
take note
Gianni Minetti is President and CEO of Paradox Engineering SA. Before
founding the Company in 2005, he worked as director of information systems
in international corporations and as a consultant in project management,
leadership, and software engineering methodologies. He holds a MSc in
Computer Science at Università degli Studi in Milan (Italy) and has a Mas-
ter’s degree in Program and Project Management from University of British
Columbia (Canada).
Enquiries: Email
A similar Smart City transformation is under way in Switzerland’s
Bellinzona, capital of Ticino canton with more than 18 thousand
inhabitants.
The smart evolution started in 2013 from its public lighting infra-
structure: about 600 mercury vapour lamps have been replaced with
LED-based devices so far, and 900 more will be substituted by the end
of 2016 to further reduce light pollution, achieve greater cost-savings
and offer a greater quality of life to citizens.
Having implemented PE.AMI as remote management and control plat-
form, local utility AMB managed to better calibrate lighting intensity
and reduce it by 50% in selected streets. Without impacting quality of
services, this enabled the City to significantly cut energy consumption
and spending.
The project also involves a Smart Metering pilot initiative, using
the same PE.AMI platform to control a portion of the power distribution
network and a set of electrical meters, and an ambitious FTTH – Fibre
To The Home plan, aiming at bringing optical fibre to all homes in
Bellinzona and surroundings.
Phnom Penh City, Cambodia
In the Kingdom of Cambodia, demand for construction and improve-
ment of infrastructures has been showing a marked increase due to
the rapid economic growth, while the price of electricity is among the
highest in ASEAN countries due to the dependence on the electricity
imports. Public lighting was identified as one of the key infrastructures
to be optimized, and the Japanese multinational company Minebea
committed to a high-efficiency LED Street Lighting project in close
collaboration with the author’s company and Iwasaki Electric.
By 2017, about 9 000 street lights will be replaced with LED luminaires
and connected to a wireless network to allow remote monitoring and
control. The infrastructure will cover four different locations: Boeng
Kak Lake area and Japan Kizuna Bridge area in Phnom Penh City,
Siem Reap City and Angkor Wat ruins area.
According to the feasibility study conducted by Minebea at
the end of March 2015, this project would reduce CO2 emissions
of 3 590 tCO2/year and strongly tear down energy consumption,
therefore representing a great contribution to Cambodia’s financial
and environmental goals.
• Streetlighting represents a major cost item in cities’
balance sheets.
• There are approximately four billion street lamps in
the world.
• Streetlighting constitutes 20% of global electricity
consumption and 6% of global carbon dioxide emis-
sions.
45 April ‘16 Electricity+Control