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The green revival of street light poles in smart cities

Update time : 2021-09-02 11:16:09

The green revival of street light poles in smart cities

Except for illuminating our roads at night, most of us may never have thought of the street lights and telephone poles that adorn our cities. But as smart cities strive to achieve their sustainable development goals, they see the humble street utility poles as one of the heroes helping them achieve their green goals.

The smartest cities in the world are working hard to help us live in a more sustainable way. The world’s population is migrating to cities, and tight land resources are forcing cities to increase density and reduce their environmental impact. This means that urban infrastructure is almost constantly upgraded. Therefore, city authorities are always looking for new and innovative services, especially in sectors that directly affect sustainability, such as public utilities and public transportation. This is where the digital street pole is coming into play.

The electric car revolution

In addition to the impact of global climate change, air pollution caused by internal combustion engines (ICE) is causing huge health costs to local residents and causing damage to urban buildings. Therefore, with the electrification of urban rail transit and buses, cities are also keen to embrace and support the migration to electric vehicles (EV), especially self-driving EVs and shuttle buses. They have the potential to completely change the city’s transportation system, thereby improving well-being, reducing medical costs, and ultimately eliminating the other damaging effects of smoke and particulate matter.

To support electric vehicles, some cities even ban the use of ICE vehicles in the city center, while others provide incentives for electric vehicles, such as free parking and cheaper permits. However, if the adoption of electric vehicles is to succeed, cities also need to strengthen the charging infrastructure in the city center. Electric vehicles in suburban areas are usually charged by homeowners, who usually use driveways and garages to charge at night. However, in the city center, municipalities usually have to participate in providing charging infrastructure on the side of the road, because residents cannot park off the street. This is where telegraph poles show their potential.

Pole Bundled Service

Although there is electricity to the street lighting poles, it is sometimes not enough to support electric car charging. In order to economically provide enough electricity for utility poles, bundling other services can help offset investment costs. For example, if the city does not upgrade from sodium vapor lights to LED street lamps, this conversion can be done with an electric car charger, which is only a small additional cost.

If charging utility poles involves digging into the streets, bundling fiber optic cables into the installation helps to cover part of the cost by expanding broadband access at the same time. Other ancillary services that can be bundled with poles to pay for it include the use of small radios on poles to extend cell coverage and local Wi-Fi. The city can also use telegraph poles for closed-circuit television and IoT sensors.

Expanding coverage is particularly important for 5G radios that use higher frequency spectrums such as millimeter waves. These higher-frequency millimeter-wave radio waves will not travel long distances or penetrate buildings, but they can be used to increase new applications in public spaces. One of the use cases for high-performance 5G connections is to support automated bus shuttles, such as the current trial between Paris Lyon train station and Austerlitz train station. Street lamp poles are great for adding additional radio access and avoid the cost of using customized poles for 5G radio access networks.

IoT sensors and cameras on poles can also be used to provide real-time traffic analysis and modeling to help manage congestion and provide information to citizens, tourists, and public safety agencies. Scene and audio analysis can be used to create models of normal usage patterns using machine learning. Analysis software can alert the authorities when abnormal situations occur, which may indicate a vehicle or pedestrian accident on the street. Sensors installed on the poles can also be used to monitor air quality in order to notify citizens and implement a low emission zone (LEZ).

Another cost-sharing benefit that cities can pursue is cooperation with local power companies. Street chargers can also obtain electricity from parked vehicles (if the owner agrees). In this way, the huge battery capacity of the urban electric vehicle fleet can be used to smooth the demand curve of the grid during peak usage periods. This means lower costs for fuel-based power generation facilities and backup storage to address intermittent issues related to renewable energy.

Early trial

In different cities such as London, Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto, there have been many early efforts to provide pole-based charging of electric vehicles. Espoo, Finland, is currently running a pilot project for an autonomous shuttle bus that uses a 5G network and radio stations are installed on street poles. It also uses telephone poles to monitor air quality and weather, provides video surveillance at bus stops and crosswalks, and contributes to city maintenance optimization, energy storage, and smart lighting.

Another pilot in Leuven, Belgium is part of its overall sustainable development and carbon neutral plan. Telegraph poles use LED smart lighting to reduce power consumption, provide 5G-ready radio access, electric car charging and hosting various sensors, which will become an indispensable part of future urban services. In addition, the city of Le Havre is building a solar power generation and storage system to power its smart poles and electric vehicle charging infrastructure. The system will also utilize the local 5G network.

In conclusion

With almost every major government looking for ways to achieve its Paris COP21 climate pledge, it is now pushing for the adoption of electric vehicles. Cities are facing the challenge of solving the charging problem for citizens who do not have access to street and charging functions. Street utility poles are a promising charging method, but the cost can be better shared with other services, such as smart lighting conversion, radio coverage, fiber optic cable extensions, and smart city services that use IoT sensors, cameras, and audio sensors. As part of a larger smart city plan, simple street utility poles can become a digital and power hub for sustainable next-generation urban services.

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