Lynchburg Business

Smartlights Shine While Conserving Energy

Issue: May 2010 by Kimberly Feldkamp in Inside The Magazine, Technology

Just imagine a street light that emits a signal when something is wrong, like the light is losing energy, the bulb needs changing or its not automatically shutting off when the sun comes up. It may sound like the technology of the future, but it’s actually the technology of today—and it’s coming to a town near you.

“There’s such a big green push right now and everyone is asking, ‘What can we do to conserve energy?’ Hopefully, this will help,” said Eric Hansen, CEO of Innovative Wireless Technologies in Forest.

Smartlights, as they’re aptly named, are new street lights that work just like older street lights but contain a wireless sensor that send signals back to a monitoring station to optimize energy consumption and to manage maintenance. A network control center will be built at the Center for Advanced Engineering and Research’s (CAER) facility in Bedford County, and the data from the lights will be monitored and analyzed there.

“This is exactly the type of project the facility was designed to support,” said Bob Bailey, executive director of CAER. “The whole idea behind the CAER is to create a research university in the region in support of local industry.”

The center will be a research hub for students from Virginia Tech, UVA and James Madison, as well as Liberty University’s engineering program and students from Sweet Briar and other local colleges. The center will also work with utility companies, IWT and local governments to determine the most cost-effective, energy-efficient lighting processes.

“This is a smart way to operate more efficiently and use technology with our limited resources,” Hansen said. “It just gives you more visibility to have all the streetlights across the region monitored at one central location.”

“Researchers will be able to monitor the information from the Smartlights, and really put data behind the numbers,” Bailey explained.

Some of those numbers include a projection of 60 percent energy savings just by switching out older, more outdated streetlights.

“Now is the perfect time to do this,” Bailey said. “There are 60 million streetlights in the U.S. that need to be replaced in the next three to 10 years. There’s another 90 million in Europe and another 20 million throughout the rest of the world. That’s 170 million street lamps worldwide that need to be replaced. So why not use something that’s more energy efficient?”

This summer, the Smartlights will be installed around the region, in Phase One of a three phase project. Ten lights will be placed in each city or town, and the information will be monitored. Lynchburg, Bedford City, Amherst, Appomattox, Altavista and Brookneal are all participating.

Right now, Bailey says they’re working with the localities to determine where to put up the lights.

“Once we decide where, we have the go-ahead to get started. It’ll probably be July or August that we’ll actually see the lights up and running,” he said.

After that, Bailey said they’ll begin the second phase, which involves the initial research program. He said they’ll start to hammer out the numbers and really analyze the data, and hopefully expand the test sites to include Smartlights in more areas. Phase Three will include continuing to monitor the data, and actually going out to other cities and regions to get other people on board with the Smartlights.

“My hope is that this project is not only good PR for the research center, but I also hope it brings the center an opportunity to attract other research,” Hansen said. “There’s such a push now to go green and with help from the federal level, it has made this project a little easier. It was a challenge a few years ago when we started with the Smartlights because there wasn’t a big focus on energy when we started.”

This whole project is made possible thanks to a $200,000 energy conservation grant that was given to The Region 2000 Local Government Council. The grant is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program.

“We want other cities to come here to see the network facility, and how the research will be applied,” Bailey said. “It’s part of an economic development strategy to help support the industries here, and hopefully by bringing more research here, we can bring more business here, and thus, more jobs.”