CASE STUDY
Smart Illumination
Transforming Streetlight Monitoring & Efficiency in a Touristic Area in Malta
A Maltese municipality with a population of 20,000 is upgrading its street lighting to LED with smart automation for on/off control in a popular tourist spot to have automated fault detection and improve maintenance.
What Prompted the Project
A local tender was issued to upgrade the current lighting infrastructure to LED which required remote, reliable, and flexible monitoring and control.
The main problem is effective maintenance of street lighting, reducing complaints from residents, ensuring excellent quality of service in a touristic area, and eliminating faults related to illuminance-based sensor systems for control of street lighting.
Key challenges
The real-world problems that needed solving
The legacy system relied on labelled poles which required residents to report faulty street lights through phone calls or emails, which proved to be inaccurate and also time consuming both for residents and the municipality alike to manage. This also results in elongated times to get faults fixed.
The legacy process to fix street lighting faults requires the municipality to send emails to the lighting poles operator and monitoring if lighting got fixed is both frustrating and inaccurate as it is based on email logging. This results in residents having to report faults multiple times, wasting further time, resident frustration, and the municipality having to report with the lighting pole operator the same fault multiple times that creates a lot of inefficiency and money loss.
Controlling and monitor streetlights through stand-alone ZHAGA and NEMA controllers for each street pole which are both expensive to purchase and expensive to maintain due to the increased number of components required proved to be way over budget and an overkill for the municipality requirements.
Perform the upgrade with minimal impact on road works and traffic both to implement and maintain. This pain point was present with the ZHAGA and NEMA controllers system.
Require to expand the project to other areas with legacy infrastructure is possible, this is extremely difficult with the ZHAGA and NEMA controllers, which requires to also change the street lighting poles to become compatible.
The legacy system did not have the capability to control lighting on seasonality or as needed and not just based on light sensors, which is a limitation during peak touristic times and cannot enhance energy efficiency during low season.
The legacy illumination sensor-based system is less reliable due to the illumination sensor becoming dirty, which is more likely to have faults that the whole street lighting does not work. This results in a very unpleasant and unsafe environment for the residents due to complete blackout.
Our Solution Architecture
Hardware
IOTPRO CURRENT TRANSFORMER to accurately monitor power consumption for up to 3 lighting strings with each string typically having between 10 and 50 street lights, these are deployed in low voltage substations or distribution boxes for street lighting. Power for the device is taken from the voltage source, which is also monitored and accurate current transformers are used to read the current, and all power quality parameters.
IOTPRO DIGITAL ANALOGUE SERIAL to control on and off of lighting strings by controlling contactors. Each IoT Pro device can control two different channels with different timings, and multiple strings requiring the same timing are bundled and actuated through the contactors.
Network
Sim-based, wireless over 4G/5G Cellular Grade NB-IoT technology, widely available throughout Malta through various network operators, even in remote areas, working on a licensed spectrum and reliable through having multiple gateways covering each spot.
The IoT Pro communicates over the UDP protocol to IoT Solutions servers.
Software
IoT Pro Software Cloud Platform is provided that includes User Access Management with configurable User Access rights, depending on whether the user works with the municipality or the street lighting operator.
The system includes a Live Overview of infrastructure status, Reporting, configurable Automated Reporting and Alerting.
A REST API connection from the IoT Pro Software Cloud Platform to the street lighting operator was created to transfer alarms related to faults to the street lighting operator which in turns automatically creates job sheets for its servicing team.
Detailed REST API documentation was provided to the client.
Competitive Advantage
IoT Pro hardware has integrated uninterruptable power supply that allows the device to continue operating and send alarms even if the infrastructure loses power.
Sensor pre-configuration ability in factory allows the device to be deployed on the field without any mobile apps or any extra tools, and simply by removing a magnet from the back of the device.
Full Firmware Upgrade over the Air and configuration of all for the hardware settings allows application changes and security patches possibility without need of on-field maintenance.
IP68 housing with IK10 rating and UV rating, allows the monitoring and controlling system to be installed outside of distribution boxes if necessary.
Power quality and power consumption monitoring of 3 phases with a single device with 0.5% reading accuracy suitable for MID Certified metering, which allows for monitoring and control of over 100 light poles with two IoT Pro hardware.
The chosen system architecture allows for benefits to be easily replicated in other areas even on High-Pressure or Low-Pressure Sodium (HPS/LPS), or Metal Halide lighting.
Results and Impact
Key Performance Indicators & Achievements
60%
drop
in resident complaints related to street lighting outages within the first 6 months, leading to significantly increased resident satisfaction, as shown by post-implementation surveys.
50%
reduction
in fault resolution time, enabled by automated fault detection and instant job sheet creation for servicing teams.
<12
months
Return on Investment (ROI) achieved through the cost-efficiency of deploying only two devices to control and monitor over 100 lighting poles.
100%
digital visibility
of faults provided via live dashboards and historical logs, allowing municipal teams to track and resolve issues more quickly and transparently.
30%
reduction
in time spent on maintenance rounds, driven by automated maintenance schedules and accurate real-time data, resulting in improved route planning and operational efficiency.
