How Smart Street Lighting Saves Power

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(Peter Nguyen, Unsplash)

16 Nov. 2018. When it comes to solving the world’s climate problem, there are a lot of different ideas on the table. Of course, in the end, a range of these plans are going to have to be used, with efforts coming from all sides to help in this area. When it comes to electricity usage, though, a lot of cities and towns are looking towards just one change to make things a whole lot better; changing the way street lighting works.

To help you out with this, this post will be exploring the differences between this sort of tool can something very similar. With this in mind, it will be easy to see why so many places are looking at this sort of route as they answer.

In the past, the lights being used to illuminate streets and roads would simply stay on as long as it was dark outside. The sensors they had built in wouldn’t be able to tell when people needed the lights or not, wasting loads of power keeping areas lit which aren’t being used for hours at a time. Modern options don’t follow this set of rules. Instead, being able to detect motion, sound, and other inputs, they can remain off until they are needed, turning on to serve people and switching back off after just a few minutes. This can save huge amounts of power, without having to compromise on the good side of street lighting.

Along with being able to turn themselves on and off based on demand, modern street lights also tend to use LEDs rather than the older bulbs which would be found inside them. Reducing power consumption by an estimated 74%, this can be the biggest push a city or town will make towards lowering their footprint on the world.

Like the option above, no one loses out from this sort of arrangement, even with the huge savings in place. This is being considered important enough for governments to fund large-scale switches to this type of bulb, spending huge amounts of money in the process.

These changes to street lighting can already be seen in cities across the world. Everyone from street lighting pole manufacturers to the people installing them are working towards using these new technologies, abandoning the ways which used to work for this sort of resource. Of course, though, it takes more than businesses to make a difference here.

In fact, most of the effort relies on governments to do their part, with a lot of promises being made, but very little action actually being carried out. You can do your part towards helping this by lobbying those in charge in your local area.

Hopefully, this post will show you just how big an impact some small changes can have on this sort of public resource. As time goes on, options like this will become the norm, making it hard to use too much power, even when you are focused on other parts of life. You can even look at similar systems for in your home.

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