March 10, 2015: Philips’ LED lighting, with its CityTouch technology, is reducing the carbon footprint and energy consumption of entire cities. This is a low cost solution that helps cities and organisations to control and maintain efficient lighting systems
The low cost lighting solutions provided by LED technology are spreading rapidly across the globe. And the Canary Islands of Spain are the latest to fall under the LED spell. The Port Authority of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which manages the ports of the three islands (El Hierro, La Gomera and La Palma) has recently adopted an LED lighting solution provided by Philips. The biggest challenge for the port authority was to handle the lighting of three different islands at the same time. The task was both difficult and time consuming. Besides, the port authority was also trying to provide better facilities to an ever increasing number of tourists, who like to take cruises from these ports.
Ease of use
Fresh LED light installations, run by a technology called CityTouch, have been provided by Philips. This has helped the authority to solve most of the problems it faced earlier, enabling it to achieve energy savings of 81 per cent! CityTouch allows the port authority staff to manage the lighting from a centrally located computer. Using the technology since November 2013 has helped the authority and the operator to simplify the monitoring and surveillance tasks. With central monitoring, the operator can remotely manage the light levels in real time and get information on each luminaire located at any of the ports, from a computer. The operator can even program the light levels months in advance. The cherry on the cake is that the lights send an email notification automatically whenever they require repair, along with specific reasons for the breakdown! This has cut down the cost of sending service crews out regularly to check if all lights are working properly.
Local impact
The innumerable advantages of LED lighting have been experienced first hand and have resulted in local organisations investing in it. CEPSA, an integrated energy company, with 49 service stations located in the Canary Islands, earlier used 150W to 400W metal halide lamps at its service stations, which led to high energy consumption and high maintenance costs.
The company replaced the halide lamps with 400 Mini300 LED projectors in all its 49 service stations. These projectors provide efficient interchangeable lighting and have been designed specially for external canopies. They are also known to provide efficient thermal management and a very long lifecycle. As an end result, the power required at these service stations has gone down by 50 per cent.
Giving back to the environment
Despite continuous efforts and investments to improve and modernise all the three ports, the port authority earlier could not manage to reduce its carbon footprint. In fact, various LED installations and technologies were adopted, yet none delivered as many benefits as the current one. The biggest achievement due to the current Philips’ technology is the near elimination of light pollution within the ports. This is in compliance with the Spanish Law for the Protection of the Astronomical Quality of the IAC Observatories, better known as The Sky Law. This ensures a clean environment and a clear night sky, free of any sort of pollution. This is in line with UNESCO’s statement in its ‘Universal Declaration on the Rights of Future Generations’ that a visible night sky is an integral part of the common heritage of all citizens and future generations.
Smarter cities adopt CityTouch technology in other parts of the world
The CityTouch technology has been adopted in other parts of the world too, making cities smarter in terms of lighting. Holbaek in Denmark opted for this technology in 2012.
