How smart city lighting can fund additional city smarts

• Number of IoT connected street lights to grow 42 per cent per annum over next 5 years
• 70 million units deployed by 2023
• Sustained movement towards open source solutions
• Siemens tops the Top 5 list of smart city solution vendors

A new report from Juniper Research shows that by 2023 smart street lighting will realise cumulative energy savings of US$15 billion. "Smart Cities: Leading Platforms, Segment Analysis & Forecasts 2019-2023"concludes that the incidence and availability of connected street lights will grow by an average by 42 per cent per annum between now and 2023. By the end of the five year period some 70 million units will have been deployed.

Juniper says the savings will be effected by converting conventional (and old-fashioned) street lights to energy-efficient LEDs. At the same time lampposts will be hooked into IoT connectivity to permit the monitoring and management of all individual lights with the aim of saving 50 per cent of energy per light.

Steffan Sorrell, the author of the new report commented, “The cost savings enabled by smart street lighting mean that many cities will look to this as a first-stage smart city project. Choosing an open platform will be key here, as additional services can be launched from the same point, while simultaneously driving-up third party vendor competition.” The argument is that the widespread uptake of open platform technologies will result in street lighting to become a major hub point for additional smart city services, such as public safety and smart transport.

Indeed, the new paper finds that many authorities with "smart city" ambitions are determinedly moving away from point solutions towards full platform procurement and so regards this trend as a strong indication that open source solutions and the "full platform" approach will become the common entry point for an increasing number of towns and conurbations that intend to deploy smart city projects.

The Juniper report also ranks the Top Five smart city platform vendors. They are, in order from one down to five, Siemens, Oracle, IBM, Huawei and Itron.

Top of the heap is Siemens’ MindSphere platform, which, when coupled with its City Performance Tool and recent Mendix acquisition is, according to Juniper Research, "a compelling offering". Meanwhile, Juniper says the number two in the ranking, Oracle, offers "a broadly capable platform in addition to extensive worldwide smart city deployment experience."