Power Consumption Reduction by Smart Control of Highway Lighting

Abstract

Consumption of power by highway lights constitutes a big component of the total power usage of a country. In a country like India where the majority of the transport is by road and with one of the largest road network the power consumption by highway lighting has to be controlled. We can see in the present scenario that the lights are manually switched ON/OFF or in some stretches automatic switching ON/OFF based on daylight detection is being done. We can see that the lights were ON, when there was no vehicle in a particular stretch. Switching OFF the light when there are no vehicles would results in great savings of power. Our proposed system does this by detecting vehicles on the road and switching ON the lights. We are proposing a system wherein the lights gets switch ON when a vehicle is detected. It remains ON for a present period of time and gets switched OFF. When the vehicle passes the next detector the corresponding light gets switched ON and so on. We are sure that this system when implemented would result in huge savings in the current consumption