EU-Financed LIFE-Diademe Project: Additional Energy Savings in Street Lighting by Means of IoT Sensors—A Case Study in Italy

Abstract

Thanks to EU program LIFE, an innovative approach has been designed and soon will be completed in the city of ROME, within EUR district, with the project LIFE-Diademe. Today, the IoT technology (Internet of Things) makes easy to install, on each lighting pole, low-cost sensors, able to detect luminance, traffic flow and weather conditions. All these parameters can be measured in a more accurate way and, above all, in a wide urban area. Within the LIFE-Diademe project, 110 devices have been installed on 110 lighting poles and 890 more will be connected by the end of 2018 to measure, in a selected area, relevant parameters for Adaptive Lighting. To obtain a wide sampling of typical road lighting situation, the testing is considering urban contests representing different type of traffic: residential, offices, shops, Public Administration, University, etc. On-site expert systems are analysing streets data and, thanks to the three basic evaluated parameters, they are adapting street lighting levels in real time mode: measurement and dimming time is being executed every minute. First data about behaviour of the system are showing an approximate energy saving of about 30% compared to pre-programmed dimming cycles, and 50% compared to no dimming. These data are comparable to other Adaptive Lighting installations-designed according to standards-where the most significant result represents that in most of the urban roads, for 90% of the time, traffic flow is lower than 10% of nominal road capacity. Thanks to new IoT concepts, data about air quality, noise and post inclination are also being collected from each lighting point. The LIFE-Diademe project experience will run for 1 year, to collect a reasonable set of data. After this period, a new lighting measurement campaign will be performed and, consequently, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and a Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) are being carried out, in order to assess results, in terms of energy saving, safety, waste reduction, and, finally, sustainability.