World’s first LoRa™ Street Lighting Control Solution, Released by Flashnet, facilitated by Actility

LoRa™ based street lighting solutions become a reality with the new inteliLIGHT® LoRa™ controllers which have been presented for the first time by Flashnet on Actility’s LoRaWAN network during the LoRa™ Alliance meeting in Paris.

Paris, FRANCE – 22’nd of July, 2015

Actility, a founding member of the LoRa Alliance, announced a new addition to its fast-growing LoRaWAN-based IoT ecosystem.Following its earlier commitment to integrate the new LoRaWAN communication standard with its smart streetlight control system inteliLIGHT®, Flashnet has successfully presented and demonstrated the new inteliLIGHT® LoRa RF Controller.

Streetlight control today is usually performed through a general switch, either activated manually, on a time-based schedule or on a daylight sensor. This allows very limited flexibility, as the entire system is either on or off. This also requires night-time checkup teams in order to discover lamp failures and any other grid malfunctions. This may not be that complicated in a small city, but when more than 500.000 streetlamps in Mecca need to be managed, it becomes a real challenge. With a pre-integrated vertical control solution for street lighting built around Actility’s core network for LoRaWAN based Internet of Things, Actility and Flashnet hope to improve the central management of streetlights.

Smart streetlight control solutions bring a totally different perspective, integrating the existing lighting infrastructure with the newest communication, hardware and software developments and providing two major benefits. First of all, important energy savings are made, through selective on/off control and dimming. This means that some lamps can be switched off individually when not needed, while others can be dimmed to about 50% of their full capacity. This can reduce the overall energy consumption dramatically, with up to 80%, if combined with LED streetlights. The second benefit is a major maintenance cost saving through lamp and grid monitoring. A smart control system monitors several electrical parameters at lamp and grid level, anticipating and avoiding defects and providing accurate malfunction information to the technical department (detailed problem information, exact location). This eliminates the need of nightly ‘blind’ inspection and significantly improves repair times, bringing down maintenance costs with more than 40% while improving overall lighting performance. Based on thorough interoperability tests performed by Actility and Flashnet on the resilience and availability of the end-to-end solution, both companies hope to accelerate the roll-out of LoRa-enabled street lighting in Smart Cities across the world.

The inteliLIGHT® FRE-220 Luminaire Controller, presented for the first time at the LoRa Alliance members meeting in Paris on 9 and 10 June, was operated through the Class C LoRaWAN network provided by Actility and successfully performed the remote turning on, off and dimming of luminaires. InteliLIGHT® is already managing tens of thousands of streetlights worldwide, but adapting the system to LoRa™ communication standards is a world premiere.

“With LoRa™ and Actility, we have taken inteliLIGHT®, our already proven street lighting management solution, to a whole new level. By adding LoRaWAN to the current PLC and classic mesh RF communication solutions, we can now implement our system with minimal investment, having unprecedented reach and providing unlimited Smart City applications. It truly is a game changer”, has declared Mr. Lorand Mozes, CEO of Flashnet.

Besides the modern and attractive design, the new inteliLIGHT® LoRa™ controller is also extremely robust and provides unprecedented lamp-level functionality and intelligence, enabling individual remote management of any streetlight equipped with electronic ballast.

The controller also carries out independent measurements and analysis of different lamp electrical parameters (active and reactive energy, current, voltage, active and reactive power, power factor and frequency) and communicates all the information through an advanced synchronization mechanism, while any errors and malfunctions are reported in real time. The entire system is fail-proof and can function independently, even in the case of communication and/or power failures.

Also, while ensuring street lighting’s safe and fail-proof operation, inteliLIGHT® offers the possibility to keep the lighting grid powered during daytime, thus providing citywide continuous power supply availability for any additional equipment. This opens the door for countless smart city applications, from street lighting based EV charging to any smart city device controlled and sensors connected throughout the city – a true smart city platform based on LoRaWAN and inteliLIGHT® infrastructure.

More information

About Actility

Actility is an industry leader in LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) large scale infrastructure with ThingPark®, the new generation standard-based M2M communication platform. Actility’s ThingPark Wireless® network provides long-range coverage for low-power sensors used in SmartCity, SmartBuilding and SmartFactory applications. (http://www.thingpark.com/en)

About Flashnet®

Flashnet is a fast paced tech company that integrates the latest IT, energy and telecommunications technologies into hardware and software solutions, creating and implementing intelligent systems for smarter cities and better infrastructure. Founded in 2005, Flashnet is a leader in intelligent utility management systems with worldwide operations, also being one of the contributor members of the LoRa™ Alliance. (http://www.flashnet.ro)

About inteliLIGHT®

inteliLIGHT® is a street lighting remote management solution and smart city platform developed by Flashnet. In-depth grid management provides an accurate real-time feedback of any change occurring along the grid, reduces energy loss and offers advanced maintenance optimization tools – up to 80% energy savings and 42% maintenance cost savings. inteliLIGHT® manages more than 80.000 lamp controllers today, in 10 cities around the world, being responsible for reducing the lighting energy consumption and corresponding CO₂ emissions. (https://intelilight.eu/)

About LoRa™

LoRa™, developed by Semtech, is a long range, low power radio frequency communication technology that brings the Internet of Things concept a step closer to large scale adoption in terms of technical capabilities and cost effectiveness. Its outstanding features: low power, long range, high immunity and spread spectrum are surpassed only by the ease of interoperability and the careful design of its security features.

About LoRa™ Alliance

LoRa™ Alliance is an open, non-profit association of members that believe the Internet of Things era is now. Its mission is to standardize Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) being deployed around the world to enable Internet of Things (IoT), machine-to-machine (M2M), and smart city, and industrial applications. (http://lora-alliance.org/)