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A NEW WAY TO MANAGE PUBLIC LIGHTING
G Casa and F Veroni
ENEL SpMSRI, Italy
INTRODUCTION
The municipalities have to guarantee the Public
Lighting service all over their territory. Public Lighting
systems must assure appropriate standard of quality,
availability and efficiency of the service provided, in
order to meet the community needs in terms of safety,
security and quality of life in urban areas.
A good Public Lighting service contributes both to
reduce road accidents, criminal acts, and to brighten
monuments, squares, roads and buildings of the city.
The citizens consider the public lighting service to be an
important parameter in order to assess the importance
attributed by authorities to “of life quality and safety”
requirements.
For these reasons, the most sensible public
administrators are calling for more adequate solutions
concerning the control of their lighting installations.
Several factors contribute to determine quality of street
lighting service; the most important ones are:
0 quality of the devices and equipment used;
0 an appropriate system architecture, followed by a
certified installation;
a careful wise management of the service, conceived
to guarantee in the long term all the appropriate
performances.
Automation has been, recently, applied to the lighting
systems, determining improved functionality in the
industrial products, available on the market, and
promoting new features llke remote-control and remote-
management, made possible by means of some
innovative data transmission technology. One of them
named PLC (Power Line Camer), makes use of the
Low Voltage distribution network as a bi-directional
communication channel. Being the electrical network a
widespread infrastructure which arrives at each
luminaries no extra cost is required for its installation.
The remote-control and remote-management is a
powerful innovation for public lighting; they could open
the future offering optimised performance, increased
efficiency and reduced management costs.
Metering and Tariffs for Energy Supply, 25-28 May 1999, Conference Publication No. 462 0 IEE 1999
ITALIAN SITUATION ABOUT THE PUBLIC
LIGHTING INSTALLATION AND
MANAGEMENT MODALITY
In Italy about 7 million of public lighting lamps have
been installed up to now, corresponding to 1200 MW
and to a consumption of 4.800.000 M W y e a r .
The operation costs are, approximately, 12 Euro per
inhabitant /year.
Public lighting service is managed by several
organisations such as: Electrical Utilities,
Municipalities, installer Associations etc.
ENEL SpA has in charge about 20% of the total
numbers of lamps.
Public lighting
Public lighting installations are, normally, fed by a
dedicated Low Voltage Distribution Line linked to a
secondary substation. The installations are composed of:
the cabinet, which includes a circuit- breaker
controlled by a photoelectric switch,
the distribution line (that could be three phase or
single phase),
the luminaries are connected between Neutral and
one Phase. If the distribution line supplies only
public lighting, its maximum length is 400 m in
urban areas and 1000 m in rural areas.
Public lighting service costs and modes
The operating cost of a Public lighting system is
referred to the single lamp and includes all the items
such as: preventive and repair maintenance, energy
consumption, repair of failures. A simple contractual
mechanism is normally adopted, all the costs are
summarised and related to the number of the luminaries
under contract. An annual fixed amount per lamp is
agreed, taking into account the type of the lamp
(mercury vapour high pressure, sodium vapour high
pressure etc.) and the power of the lamp.
Services provide to the customer
Ordinary maintenance. It is a preventive maintenance
scheduled to clean and check the luminaries, repairing
the mechanical and electrical parts, out of order. This
maintenance includes also, following an appropriate
program, the substitution of lamps every two years,
corresponding to a life of 8,000 working hours
Repair maintenance. It’s to overcome the random
faults, repairing broken lamps and accessories, within
one week after the communication sent by the
municipality, where the fault occurred. The
identification of failures is in charge to the Public
Administration which has to use a proper staff. It’s
important to remark this aspect because: a remote
control system identifies failures in real time, adding
new value to the service.
Switch ON-OFF of the lamps. This operation is made
through a dedicated circuit breaker, placed in the head
of the Line supplying the lamps. The circuit breaker is
controlled by a photoelectric switch calibrated on
defined level of environment light. In this way the
lamps are supplied 4.000 hours per year ,on average.
PUBLIC LIGHTING AUTOMATION SYSTEMS
STATE OF ART
Public lighting automation systems today available on
the market, using advanced and innovative
technologies, solutions able to comply with all the
requirements coming from Public Administration. In the
near future, they will determine a great improvement in
the quality of service still reducing the costs.
The typical general architecture of these systems is
showed in figure 1. It is organised in three hierarchical
levels corresponding to:
9 Remote computer station;
9 Central Controller;
9 Lamp Controller:
Remote computer station. Based on a Personal
Computer, it collects, via a bi-directional
communication channel (switched phone network,
Cellular modem etc), the data stored within the Central
Controller. The remote station can be connected to
several Central Controllers and, by means of a
specialised software component, can guarantee a
centralised and certified management.
An automatic polling, daily scheduled, identifies:
0 the faults occurred during the night,
the type of fault.
The remote computer station makes use of a customised
software, tailored on customer needs, developed to
centralise all the possible operations related public
lighting management,. The customised software include
several application layers such as: data base, man
machine interface, automatic phone call etc.
Centralised operation implies a great number of
functions such as: remote control of the installations,
“just in time” repair of failures, maintenance report and
statistics related components’ time life, medium time
between failure and consequently spare parts’
optimisation.
Central Controller. This electronic device, located in
the secondary substation, has in charge two main tasks.
The first one is conceived to manage either Distribution
lighting Line or single luminaries, in this case each
luminaries have to be equipped with a Lamp Controller.
The Lamp Controller communicates, using PLC
technology, with the Central Controller.
The second task is to assure the integrity of the data
until they are successfully transmitted, to the Remote
computer station.
Lamp Controller. Electronic device installed in each
luminaries, conceived to detect which part of the
luminaries, capacitor, ballast, lamp is broken.
Equipped with a Power Line modem tuned on B Band,
(ASK modulation with carrier at 112kHz, transmission
speed 166,6 Baud) receives commands and transmits
information to the Central Controller.
MARKET PRODUTS
An internal survey, done on public lighting automation
systems offered on the market, has allowed to classify
these systems in two groups.
1. Distribution Line automation system.
2. Lighting automation system.
Distribution Line automation system. The systems of
this group are conceived to control the integrity of the
lamps supplied by a dedicated Distribution Line. They
are able to detect if one or more lamps, connected to the.
same Distribution Line, are broken without indicating
their physical or logical position.
The architecture is based on a Central Controller which
transfers data, via switched phone network, to a Remote
computer station.
To simplify the description Central Controller is an
electronic device, which can be considered a Watt-
meter, provided with a powerhl communication link,
directly connected to the output terminals of the circuit
breaker supplying the Distribution Line. The Central
Controller measures constantly, average on 15 minutes,
the values of electrical parameters, i.e. current, voltage,
power factor and active power. The values of the
samples are stored and the increments are monitored to
detect when they overcome a determinate threshold of
alarm. A message, indicating the lamps broken, is
generated and transferred to the Remote computer
station.
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The main advantage of this kind of systems lies in the
low costs to install the devices to maintenance the
system and to perform the overall operation.
Lighting automation system. The Lighting automation
systems delivered today on the market represent the
state of art, able to satisfy the requirements originates
by the municipalities involved in the survey on the
subject.
Among the requirements the most significant ones were:
the possibility of switching lamp individually or in
“variable group” without having to make costly and
penalising alterations to the already existing public
lighting installation,
the possibility of rotational use of each bulb and
control of the real operating hours, thus ensuring the
uniform ageing of the components.
the possibility of analysing the efficiency of each
luminaries in order to eliminate the causes of:
insulation failures, insufficient compensation of
power factor, anomalous consumption in the case of
exhausted lamps
The architecture of the systems belonging to this group,
is showed in fig. 1, they allow the management and the
control of each lamp, without constrains in terms of
distance from the Remote computer station, which can
be located at the most convenient place and connected
to one or more Central Controller via cellular-phone or
other communication media.
These goals are achieved because each luminary is
provided with it own Lamp Controller.
Lamp Controller has been developed to manage the
light flux of each lamp and to switch it on-off, in
accordance to the strategies and/or to a time-table
programmed by the system manager. The strategies are
very flexible because they exploit the use of a bi-
directional communication channel, based on
Distribution Line Carrier technology, which is a
permanent, free of charge link between the Central
Controller and all the lamps wired to the Distribution
Line.
This system is able to detect a failure and to generate an
alarm automatically message, indicating which lamp is
failed and which part of the luminary is broken:
capacitor, ballast, lamp etc.
A daily phone call from the Remote computer station to
each Central Controller, makes possible:
to determine faults occurred during the night;
to diagnose the type of the fault and to identify the
position of the lamp;
to organise repair work, indicating not only where is
located the luminary, but which spare part have to
be adopted;
to program the desired level of light in the various
area according to time of day and period of the year.
Finally, it was possible to compare equivalent
components, produced by different manufacturers, and
to evaluate their real life-span and to collect elements
for the assessment of the best qualitylprice ratio of each
component.
ENEL EXPERIMENTS AND FIELD TRIALS
ENEL is interested to study the feasibility of new
technological solutions, conceived to improve public
lighting efficiency and quality of service, in order
to promote:
new Value Added Services;
Energy and Cost Saving.
Value Added Services. The electrical network, used as
communication channel (DLC technology), is an
existing widespread wiring which covers all the
territory.
That means that an Electricity Utility could offer data
transfer services based on DLC infrastructure at
minimum cost.
The secondary substation is the natural concentrator of
all the services, based on the technology mentioned
before, that an Electrical Utility could be able to
provide. It’s very important, from a marketing point of
view, to promote a large range of services, at very low
incremental costs, in order to cover the heterogeneous
needs coming from the potential customer, like
Municipalities, other not electrical Utility and so on,
and public lighting management is one of them.
Energy and Costs Saving. Today the operating costs of
public lighting management spread over two items:
energy consumption, which represent 55% of the
total costs;
0 maintenance, ordinary and repair maintenance,
which represent 45% of the total costs.
ENEL experimentation is aimed at evaluating the
costsibenefits ratio which can be obtained with lighting
automation systems, in order to produce new
specifications to be adopted for the future installation.
ENEL field trials. ENEL is partner in the ESPRIT
Project ETHOS for the promotion of new Value Added
Service.
Under the ETHOS project three Secondary Substations
have been selected and equipped with automation
systems of the types mentioned before. A complete and
long lasting test, has been carried out, in order to verify
the benefits coming from the technological upgrade.
Two of these Secondary Substations have been
equipped with the same type of systems (Distribution
Line automation system), but produced by different
manufacturers.
The main characteristics of the pilot trials are reported
in the table 1 .
In order to have the maximum flexibility, ENEL
adopted the solution to equip each Central Controller,
with a mobile phone. In this way, through the Remote
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computer station located at the ENEL Agency, the can costlbenefit parameters and the impact of the
drive all the function of the system. automation on the existing organisation.
In the pilot trial BREMBATE di SOPRA have been Public lighting service could represent a real business
installed five new bi-power lamp controllers. opportunity for all the Electrical Utilities in the near
With the intention .of reducing the energy consumption future. In Europe there are more then 70 million
of about 40%. At the start up the lamps are full powered luminaries installed to be managed.
in order to guarantee the maximum light; then it’s
possible to reduce the light reducing the power of the
selected lamp, according to system manager strategy.
This lamp controller represent the best compromise in
reducing electricity consumption with an acceptable
lighting standard; the results are shown in the diagram
1.

CONLUSION
The field trials, with their results, show that the
automation applied to public lighting improves
efficiency reducing management costs, at the end of the
experiment, it will be possible to quantify better
References
1. Fassina E, 1996, “Innovazioni tecniche e
contrattuali: vantaggi competitivi per l’offerta di
servizi nell’illuminazione pubblica”, Convegno
Nazionale AID1 1996

Table 1
P. LIGHTING
No CITY SYSTEM DISTRIBUTION LINE LAMPS

LINE LENGH TOTAL POWER.

TYPE TYPE
MAX LAMPS
(LAMP) No
(LINE) [ml [WI
LINE
1 PRESEZZO AUTOMATION THREE PH. 400 SODIUM VAPOUR 33 4.925
HIGH PRESS.
PONTE LINE MERCURY VAP. 33
S.PIETR0 AUTOMATION ’INGLE pH. 300 2.130
HIGH PRESS.

3 BONATE LIGHTING THREE PH. 650 MERCURY VAP. 38 4.300

Diagram 1

100
90
ao
70
60
50
40
30
20
IO
0
Active Light
Power
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TELEPROCESSING COMPUTER STATION

LAMP CONTROLLER

/
U

Fig. 1 Public Lighting automation system