Society is requiring for a better world at present and in the future. People are looking for more sustainable practices in all areas and lighting is one field that can improve the life of a society a lot. The better lighting on the highways, residential areas, city center, secondary roads, industrial areas and parks makes people to feel safe in improved urban environment. European Commission’s project ESOLi (Energy Saving Outdoor Lighting) project to be actualized in Latvia by the company Ekodoma.

What about municipalities? They need to search for new technologies to meet their infrastructure demands. If the aim of city is to save energy (and that means reduction of CO₂ emissions and saving of money), more effective control and management of the lighting system in the city, and to have the image of green city then it is worth to think about intelligent street lighting. With the help of energy agencies and street lighting operators it is easier to achieve these goals.

At present in Europe around 80 million street lighting installations consume approx. 60 TWh of electricity per year, and what is important – it is possible to save more than 60% of this consumed energy if traditional street lighting systems will be replaced with intelligent lighting systems like adaptive outdoor lighting or system of LED lamps.

IEE project ESOLi in Latvia

To overcome barrier that is related with distrust towards the new technologies, European Commission launched the ESOLi project (Energy Saving Outdoor Lighting) which is co-funded by the Intelligent Energy Europe program. The project began in 2010 and in Latvia it is implemented by Ekodoma Ltd.

The main aim of the project is to increase the understanding about intelligent lighting systems and to promote the use of these technologies across Europe. It is also about to increase energy efficiency and to reduce CO2 emissions in the field of outdoor lighting, to establish innovative financing schemes, to transfer knowledge from experienced countries to countries with little amount of such a system, to establish a wide network of lighting specialist on national and European level and to improve market conditions of energy service companies.

The task for Ekodoma Ltd. is to increase the knowledge regarding energy saving, to coordinate procurement initiatives, to promote the development of legislation and standards and to develop a list of consumers’ requirements.

Good practical examples

In Latvia intelligent street lighting system you can find already in Riga and Ogre and soon this system will be also used in Jaunjelgava, Madona and Saldus. For these cities it will be possible to feel financial and environmental benefits (reduced CO₂ emissions). The projects are interesting from 2 viewpoints: technological solutions and use of green investment scheme.

In Ogre district street lighting remote control and management system was installed at the end of year 2010. In total 40 street lighting management devices was installed, which can control 3 lighting lines and 450 lanterns each. Control and management system helps to save energy resources and thus reduce dissemination of CO₂ emissions in atmosphere. Lighting can be controlled remotely, i.e., the user (in this case Ogre municipality) can turn it on/off and supervise whole system from their computer.

Management system allows the user to control and manage the whole city lighting from office or anywhere where it is possible to connect to the internet.

With intelligent management system, in Ogre it was possible to save 5792 kWh of electricity and 2299 kg of CO₂ emissions (in one month) if compared with the old system.

Implementation of such a system allows to save energy, amount of emitted CO₂ emissions and thus – money. So if you are searching for solutions related with lighting systems in long term then this is exactly the option you are looking for.