EQUANS is developing and installing a connected solution to improve street lighting and safety for Brussels residents.
Faulty, broken lighting with the wrong settings…. Detecting every little anomaly in Brussels’s street lighting cannot just be left up to the watchful eye of local residents. Sibelga, the distribution system operator in the Brussels-Capital Region, knows that as well as anyone. Following a public tender in August 2019, Sibelga tasked EQUANS with installing an “Intelligent Street Lighting” system. This system is intended to both guarantee the quality of the capital’s lighting and reduce electricity consumption.
Effective and sustainable management
Sibelga has been working to reduce the amount of electricity consumed by the Brussels-Capital Region’s street lighting for several years. So far, the network operator has already installed 8,000 LED lighting fixtures in streets and parks around the city. Making huge savings in the process! And unlike conventional bulbs, LED bulbs do not have to be replaced as soon as they start flickering. An LED bulb consists of a set of diodes. Some will continue working even if others stop. Thanks to the system put in place by EQUANS, Sibelga can now remotely detect even the slightest fault, allowing it to manage street lighting optimally and in real time.
How does it work?
The aim is to gradually connect all Siblega lighting units (i.e. 87,000 fixtures) to a street lighting management platform over the next ten years. This platform, specially designed for Sibelga by our teams, will make it possible to control street lighting in the Brussels-Capital Region’s 19 municipalities. A park is staying open until 8pm? No problem! Sibelga staff will be able to switch off the lights at closing time while leaving the lights along the street opposite on, if necessary. The platform also makes it possible to adjust the intensity of individual lights (dimmed) according to the time of day, traffic or a specific lane’s function. It’s a real win for the environment! Another big advantage: the system will be able to identify any defective lamp or technical malfunction.
An open, connected platform
Work started in autumn 2020 and the first 4500 lighting units should be connected to the system by this winter. Under this contract, our teams are responsible for the supply, installation and configuration of all equipment, including the lighting unit controllers (a small box fitted to each lighting unit to collect data). The core of this solution is the IT platform, of course, (Central Management Software) as it allows us to control everything remotely. The software was fully developed by the EQUANS teams on the basis of a solution used in the airport sector. What’s special about it? It is compatible not only with Sibelga’s existing applications but also with the various technologies used by equipment manufacturers. This guarantees our customer complete independence from its suppliers.
