Smart Street Lighting in Tartu

Within the framework of the SmartEnCity project, the City of Tartu replaced 320 existing sodium lights in the city centre area of Tartu with energy efficient LED lighting. The new lighting and the traffic and environmental sensors together form a smart street lighting network. Energy efficient street lighting was installed along Pepleri, Pargi, Kuperjanovi, Õpetaja, Tiigi, Vanemuise, Aida, Lao, Kalevi, Tähe, W. Struve, Akadeemia, Kitsas, Soola, Lille, Vallikraavi, Filosoofi, Lootuse, Kastani, Veski, Kooli, A. Haava and Näituse Street, all located within the pilot area of the project.

Cityntel OÜ installed control units in all of the lighting, allowing for the operation of the lighting to be organised remotely. The smart street light control system developed is based on a wireless mesh technology. Smart controllers, capable of network and device-related decision-making, are installed in each of the new 312 LED street lights in Tartu and rely on wireless communication for exchanging information between the controllers and sensors. Unlike competing solutions where all control commands are issued from a server or network controller, this smart control solution requires no permanent server connectivity, as operational rules are stored directly in the luminaire controller. The aim is to bring intelligence and data processing to the device level and build networks of locally collaborating self-aware devices. These, mostly sensors and luminaire controllers, take into account local weather and traffic conditions and adjust street lights without any central server data processing.

The street light network of the demo area will be supplied with the following sensors and detectors:

• PIR movement detector – capable of detecting people and vehicles and computing the overall human presence and traffic flow level
• Movement detector with cameras – detects people and vehicles using picture analytics and is capable of differentiating between vehicle types (passenger cars, buses, trucks etc.)
• Light reflection sensor – measures the rate of reflected light from road surface for analysing road conditions (dry, wet, snowy etc.)
• Noise sensor – capable of detecting noise level and source (human speech, traffic etc.)
• Environmental sensor – measures pollution (CO2, NOx), air temperature, humidity etc.