Brasov, Apr. 26-th, 2018

Saint-Chamas is situated on the shore of the Étang de Berre lagoon, 15 km south of Salon-de-Provence and 50 km north-west of Marseille, in a part of the region that has not been yet industrialized. Home for almost 10.000 Saint-Chamasséens, the village’s recorded history goes as back as the Paleolithic era, with traces and archeological sites from Liguria, Celt and Roman civilizations.

With its rich history behind, Saint Chamas is now exploring the future. The port, the crammed narrow streets of the old town and the wide spaces in the small industial area outside the town have provided the perfect environment for testing inteliLIGHT®’s LoRaWAN™ compatible streetlight control. Engie Ineo, the lighting service provider in Saint Chamas, was already using a feeder pillar monitoring system but is currently looking into upgrading for individual lamp management. Without any IoT communication infrastructure already deployed in the area, considering its fast deployment and long-range capabilities, the LoRaWAN™ private network installation was the solution of choice.

Engie Ineo is one of the most important utility service providers in France, displaying an impressive array of expertise, from city utility management to nuclear power plant maintenance.

LoRaWAN™ infrastructure was chosen due to its capability to reliably connect sensors and actuators over long distances, using low-bitrate public radio frequencies. With its unique penetration capability, a LoRaWAN™ gateway deployed on the top of the Mayor’s office building connected all the controllers over a distance of up to 5 kilometers. The technology also offers unique benefits in terms of bi-directionality, security, mobility and accurate localization. The very fast deployment, the possibility to choose between a private or public network architecture and the low operation costs encouraged the adoption of this state-of-the-art communication solution.

The pilot project initiated by Engie Ineo included one base station, 83 LoRaWAN™ compatible controllers (FRE-220 – wired upgrade) and 1 feeder pillar control and monitoring unit (FRCM). The controllers were installed over the existing lighting infrastructure (HPS lights with dimmable ballasts), without any lamp replacement or investment. To verify LoRaWAN™ reach, connectivity and reliability, the upgraded lamps were localized in three very different areas within Saint-Chamas:

• The first group of controllers were installed in the immediate vicinity of the city hall (where the base station is installed)
• The second group was installed in a denser urban area, average distance of 1-2km, without line-of-sight (architectural lighting, controllers mounted almost at street level, testing communication reach and penetration)
• The third group was installed in a more remote industrial area, almost 5km from the base station

Flashnet technical support engineers have assisted the implementation teams, both remote and on-site, during the project’s deployment.

“It was a great implementation experience for us” declared George Zaharia, inteliLIGHT® Division Manager. “Our technical support chief engineer visited the implementation site, just to make sure everything was going according to plan. inteliLIGHT® installation and commissioning worked perfectly, we have trained the system operators and supervised their first steps with the Streetlight Control Software”.