Telensa, the leading global provider of connected street lighting and smart city applications, has announced that it has been selected by energy services provider, SSE Contracting and Devon County Council to upgrade streetlighting in Devon to a smart control system. Telensa’s Central Management System (CMS), PLANet®, will be used to wirelessly communicate with 11,000 streetlights in the city of Exeter and Torbay so that they can be managed and maintained remotely. As the smart streetlighting will help the council to reduce its energy costs and CO2 emissions, and enable it to manage its lighting more responsively in line with the needs of its citizens, a further expansion of the network is planned.

Connecting streetlights into an intelligent wireless platform and central management system is the next step in the Council’s policy to reduce its carbon emissions whilst simultaneously improving the services it provides to citizens.

Councillor Stuart Hughes, Devon County Council Cabinet Member for Highway Management, commented, “The streetlighting contract is extremely important as we continue to reduce our carbon emissions. Streetlights account for a significant amount of the Council’s emissions so our shift to LED combined with central control will help us make further energy and carbon savings.”

Derek Bell, SSE Contracting’s Head of Operations, Regional Lighting for the project commented, “We are proud to support the Council as they move to energy efficient LED combined with smart, centrally controlled lighting. The new LED replacements will realise up to 60% in carbon reduction and with the added benefit of extending Telensa’s Central Management System to manage a further 13,000 lights, Devon County Council will gain greater control of the lighting and further potential savings. This will ensure better response to lighting failures and safer communities as lights can be adjusted as necessary.”

Telensa’s TALQ2 certification ensures full interoperability with a range of outdoor device networks and smart city solutions. Environmental monitoring, traffic counting, gully sensors and smart parking may all be added onto the platform in the future. The PLANet CMS software also supports integration with other city systems such as Devon’s asset and fault management systems.

“Devon Council’s streetlighting policy seeks out new savings in energy consumption to reduce carbon emissions and negate the impact of rising energy costs. This sits within a wider policy to bring the benefits of smart city living to its residents. We recently deployed our two millionth Telecell so we were able to point to real-life deployments where councils right now, both in the UK and internationally, are reaping the environmental and cost saving benefits of Telensa PLANet and our smart streetlighting platform” says Brent Hudson, CEO, Telensa.

Visit www.telensa.com for more information