With the development of the internet, people are now considering connecting every field of city infrastructure to build a smart city. This can be achieved through the application of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and other intelligent computing technologies. Since smart lighting is one of the smart city initiatives, the role of smart poles has become more and more important. Now many cities are changing the poles of their street lights into smart ones to improve their management. Read this passage to obtain firsthand information about smart poles!
What are smart poles?
Compared with traditional light poles, there are more components that can achieve various functions in smart light poles. By applying the technology of the Internet of Things and cloud computing, operators can centralize the data of the street lights and control and manage them remotely. The necessary equipment can include controllers, intelligent distribution boxes, servers, a smart city monitoring center, computers, and so on. As ABI research has estimated, by 2030, over 10.8 million smart light poles will be installed all over the world. The market for smart poles has kept expanding in recent years, and the total turnover may reach tens of billions of dollars by 2025.
What can smart poles do?
- Smart lighting: Through precise switching and on-demand lighting control, the smart street lights can realize real-time dimming, fault monitoring, and other functions. In this way, it saves on maintenance costs and improves maintenance efficiency.
- Emergency charging: By making use of the electricity from the street lighting system, the smart light poles can become convenient charging stations for electric vehicles. And these lights can connect with the smart platform system to provide a variety of payment methods. The convenience of charging vehicles using new resources will promote them.
- Video surveillance: This is one useful function that many cities have applied to their street lights. Once the video surveillance systems are installed, the dense distribution of the street lights can make monitoring every part of the city possible. By loading cameras, it can monitor real-time road conditions, traffic flow, violations of regulations, etc. Thus, it creates a stable public security environment.
- Communication service: The smart light poles can build a WiFi network over the city. Besides sending information, it is also helpful for the promotion and application of smart city technologies.
- Information release: The smart light pole can also be equipped with LED information release screens, which can quickly and easily release real-time information such as municipal information, public security information, weather conditions, road traffic, etc. through the platform.
- Environmental monitoring: By carrying a variety of environmental monitoring sensors, it can realize real-time monitoring of environmental information in every corner of the city, such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, PM2.5, rainfall, water accumulation, etc., and the data can be provided to the analysis of relevant departments.
- One-key help: By loading the emergency help button, when an emergency occurs in the surrounding environment, you can press the button and get in touch with the police as soon as you can.
Advantages of smart poles
Beautify the city streets: The smart poles are designed in a modern style and have a simple appearance. They can create a new landscape for the city and improve the impression of the city streets.
Multifunctional: One smart pole can have the functions of smart lighting, wireless communication, surveillance, monitoring of the environment, emergency calling, advertising, and so on. It will be worth the money you spend on it.
Energy-saving: Because of their smart lighting system, they can light up only when needed. Besides, the other components in the smart light poles can make the automation more accurate. The sensor can detect the motions of people and vehicles, and the network will upload these data to the platform so as to realize precise control.
Improve traffic conditions: By monitoring the roads and surroundings, the smart poles can help find out what is happening on the roads, sending data through the network for the operators to send warnings or fix the problems. For example, they can be used to test the speed of the road, find places where there are obstacles, and so on.
Challenges of the smart poles
There will be a lot of data transmission and information interaction in the process of controlling the light poles. Therefore, the safety of the network is very important when designing the smart lighting system. Besides, the smart light poles use various technologies, so they need a uniform standard to ensure compatibility. In addition, the costs of the construction and maintenance of the smart light poles are relatively high, so the balance between income and benefits is also worth considering.
Conclusions
Smart poles play an important role in building a smart city. Their multiple functions and a number of advantages have made the project a constructive choice. Though there may be challenges, the future of smart light poles is bright. For both smart and ordinary street lights, there is one thing that is essential, and that is the LED light. It wouldn’t be better to have a functional smart light pole with a high-quality LED light. Therefore, you should definitely consider choosing LED lights from Mokolight. With an experience of over 17 years, Mokolight is a Chinese manufacturer with a factory of 12,400 m2. Our products go through professional tests, and the quality is guaranteed by certifications like UL and RoHS. Contact us now and let the best LED lights illuminate the right way to smart lighting construction!