City of Borås. Photo: AdobeStock
Winter darkness and high energy costs highlight the importance of monitoring public lighting efficiently. Borås is one of the cities that has therefore chosen to connect its streetlights to Infracontrol Online. After a smaller pilot project last year, 90 additional units have now been added. The smart and adaptable control system reduces energy consumption, operational costs and environmental impact while increasing operational reliability, leading to a brighter life for everyone.
Kristin Haglund, lighting engineer at the City of Borås, talks about the advantages of the solution:
– An important reason to do this is that the monitoring of public lighting can be better adapted to the actual need, which helps us to save energy and reduce the lighting’s environmental impact. We also get better operational monitoring, which gives us an overview of possible disturbances. Another significant advantage of connecting the lighting control centers to Infracontrol Online is that we also handle the fault reports from citizens there. It simplifies for the maintenance staff to have gathered everything in one place and helps to deliver higher quality to the citizens.
Reduced energy consumption and more reliable operation
In Borås, Infracontrol Online has been used since 2010 for e.g. handling error reports, parking guidance and traffic measurement. Last year, as part of a pilot project, it was decided to connect some of the lighting control cabins to the system. And now, the next step has been taken:
– After a successful pilot project, we will now connect another 90 lighting control cabins, reveals Kristin Haglund. We do this by equipping the cabins with control units linked to Infracontrol via GPRS.
The lighting control centers are equipped with Capelon’s SC-200 control units, which Borås Elnät and Borås Elcenter put in place. The control units are then connected to Infracontrol Online via 4G, making it possible to adjust the on- and off times for lighting according to the actual need and thus optimize energy consumption. However, ensuring the quality of the operation and handling any disturbances are of equal importance.
– Infracontrol Online not only helps us to receive operating alarms from the lighting control centers and fault reports from the citizens but also sends out the information to our contractors and monitors that the faults are being taken care of, tells Kristin Haglund. The service helps us provide a high and stable quality of lighting in the municipality to the citizens, simplifying the daily work and saving time for our municipality staff and our contractors.
Infracontrol Online is in use not only in the City of Borås, but even in e.g. the City of Malmö, Lunds municipality, Vellinge municipality, Härryda municipality, Tekniska Verken (Linköping municipality), Swedavia as well as the Swedish Transport Administration. In total, this includes approx. 2,500 lighting control cabins.
It is easy for citizens to report lighting faults by using the Borås’ fault reporting app. The maintenance staff quickly receives information about disruptions to simplify their work management. Controls of lighting systems and adjustments of parameters are conveniently done in the operator’s app.
