Telensa, the global leader in connected streetlight solutions and now a Signify company, is supporting Milton Keynes City Council and Service Provider, Ringway Milton Keynes, in a drive to energy efficient public lighting. 58,000 streetlights will be upgraded across the city to the Telensa smart streetlight solution over the next 12 months delivering considerable energy savings and operational efficiencies.

With energy costs increasing and an ambition to be carbon neutral by 2030, the council is looking at ways to reduce its electricity usage whilst still providing a safe level of streetlighting. The deployment is part of Milton Keynes’ wider upgrade programme which includes moving to energy-efficient LEDs.

A key factor for the highways team was to strive for value for money as an outcome of the tender process, along with enhancing joint opportunities to reduce energy costs, improve social value and increase inward investment into Milton Keynes. Telensa was able to clearly demonstrate this with the potential for energy savings. Using PLANet, Telensa’s market leading software system, Milton Keynes will be able to schedule precisely when individual lights come on, and by how much, varying these schedules as needed. PLANet’s easy-to-use dashboard makes fine-tuning simple, helping to reduce the amount of energy consumed to run the streetlight service. Captured within the dashboard, the resulting savings are measurable such that they can be assessed by senior council members and made available to the public.

In partnership with Telensa, Ringway Infrastructure Services have modelled the savings possible and expects to achieve over five million kWh savings following completion of the project.

Daniel Mullins, operations manager, Ringway said: ‘With cost of energy continuing to rise and the need to move towards innovative solutions there is a clear priority to complete the Street Lighting LED conversion programme in Milton Keynes along with implementing a streetlight controls system to help to reduce energy consumption and achieve the carbon neutral agenda for our client, Milton Keynes City Council.’

Distinct from other providers, Telensa is exploring the possibility of helping the Ringway and Milton Keynes team make even further energy savings safely by using the council’s existing traffic counting radar system. This is something that Telensa has already done with other councils in the UK with strong results. The data collected from the council’s traffic radars can be used by the Telensa system to control light levels further on Milton Keynes’ roads and streets.

Andy Gowen, chief executive officer, Telensa said: ‘From an operations perspective, Milton Keynes will deepen its commitment to the public by complementing its after-dark visual checks with an automated system controlled by the latest software. The council currently relies on its own scouting activities, or members of the public, to find and report faulty lights. Now the Telensa system will alert the team to highlight a problem to respond to faults in a timely way and, with the intelligence provided, even predict problems before they arise.’

Telensa will make a big difference to the council’s issue with ‘dayburners’ where faulty equipment fails to turn off the lights at sunrise.

Telensa’s PLANet is built using open interfaces and comes with plug-in Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) enabling integration with other software systems used by the council.