inteliLIGHT® controls over 12.000 lamps and integrates both an advanced security systems and a revolutionary electric vehicle charging system with its PLC installation in Brasov, ROMANIA.

The location and context

Located in the central part of Romania, Brasov is the 7th largest city in the country. First attested in the early Middle Ages under the name Corona, Brasov has a fascinating history with Hungarian kings, Teutonic knights, German colonists and Hebrew merchants leaving their mark. The long, troubled history of this old Medieval trading post enriched its culture and architecture, making it today one of the main touristic attractions in the region, preferred by most of the tourists visiting Romania.

The quality of street lighting, especially in the old center, is considered critical for the city’s touristic output. Also, personal safety and environment issues are taken seriously by the municipality of this city, visited annually by more than 1.000.000 tourists from all over the world

The challenge

The municipality needed to improve the street lighting efficiency, but without changing the entire infrastructure. The budget did not include lamp upgrades to LED or DALI/0-10V electronic ballast. Therefore, the main project requirement was controlling over the existing infrastructure, putting inteliLIGHT® retrofitting capabilities to a test, as most of the 12.000 fixtures were using HID lamps with electromagnetic ballasts. Also, due to the significant energy losses known to exist in the grid, inteliLIGHT needed to address energy consumption assessment within the lighting cabinet and automatically compare with the sum of individual lamp consumption.

Together with these requirements, the municipality was looking for solutions to implement a city-wide CCTV system and panic buttons in order to improve public security throughout the city.

In order to achieve the project’s requirements, Flash Lighting Services, the company that manages the entire street lighting infrastructure in Brasov, decided to initiate a partnership with Flashnet and inteliLIGHT.

The argument

inteliLIGHT®’s PLC solutions offers stable connectivity through existing power cables and extended retrofitting capabilities. At the moment, it was one of the very few solutions focusing on retrofitting and adapting to electromagnetic ballasts and older lamps, rather than replacing the entire infrastructure.

The system communicates securely over the existing power cables, establishing a reliable and reasonably fast connection without additional investments and civil works. Open protocols allow inteliLIGHT CMS integration with other functionalities besides street lighting control and the lamp-level control keeps the grid powered up even during the day. This way, additional equipment can be powered and managed directly through the street lighting grid even during the day, when the legacy street lighting systems are powered off.\

Technical solution

Main inteliLIGHT streetlight control system

1. 2300 x inteliLIGHT FPX-220 ON/OFF controller. Designed to be used in controlling decorative lighting, architectural lighting (using lamps up to 500W) and contactors. A universal device, inteliLIGHT® FPX-220 operates with any lamp or electric device by controlling the power supply of the connected unit.
2. 6990 x inteliLIGHT FPM-152 electromagnetic ballast controller. Compatible with lamps using electromagnetic ballast up to 150W (both HPS and HID), it allows ON/OFF and dimming control in addition to full electrical parameter reading.
3. 2850 x inteliLIGHT FPM-402 electromagnetic ballast controller. Similar functionalities as FPM-152, but compatible with lamps up to 400W.
4. 200 x Remote Terminal Unit equipment sets (FPC-200 data concentrator, FNM-232 electric network analyzer and FRB-110 intelligent communications router).
5. inteliLIGHT streetlight control software

Additional functionalities and integrations

1. Dispatch center, integrating all the system functionalities
2. City-wide surveillance using Mobotix cameras
3. 2N Helios IP Force VOIP panic buttons and BPVOIP communication devices
4. EBG Compleo electric vehicle chargers

The financial solution

For this project, in order to support urban development through the modernization of the street lighting system and improved public safety in Brasov, the city of Brasov received an EU grant from the European Regional Development Fund 2007-2013.

The deployment

The dispatch center was the first functional system segment, as all the other system components needed to be integrated here. The following steps were lighting control, security system and EV charging.

Flash Group began the actual field deployment in March 2014 and it took 16 months until reaching full system capabilities. Up to 200 controllers were installed daily, with an installation team of up to 4 installation teams. Since the system is fully scalable, parts of the system were functional right after the first RTU installation, and Flash Group could schedule the installation flow according to the municipality’s priorities during the year.

The system was inaugurated in July 9-th, 2015.