French IoT firm Kerlink and Indian smart-lighting specialist CitiLight have expanded their collaboration to offer LoRaWan smart street-lighting systems globally.

On the heels of launching its iStation LoRaWan gateway, Kerlink has partnered CitiLight to collaborate and deploy large smart street-lighting projects in India and internationally.

CitiLight, whose systems manage more than a million streetlights in India, completed six projects using Kerlink IoT gateways in 2021, including the largest smart-lighting installation in the country. That project serves a population of 1.2 million people and is located in the Thane district of Maharashtra. It covers an area of 67km² and includes 35,000 lights, of which 18,000 operate with LoRaWantechnology.

CitiLight, an OEM partner to leading Indian and global lighting companies, has completed smart-lighting projects in 112 municipalities and five smart cities and several other districts in India. Its products automatically manage streetlights, road lights and highway lights via Velociti LMS lighting management system, the company’s web and smartphone-compatible application. It controls light-change schedules, detects faults and notifies system owners about their streetlight networks in real time.

CitiLight’s LoRaWan smart-lighting projects are powered by Kerlink’s Wirnet iStations, long-range and low-power gateways that comes with features for remote monitoring and radio network configuration. These gateways meet the standard requirements of municipalities and other users that want to adopt the efficiency benefits of the IoT in customised, reliable networks that can connect high volumes of end devices and manage millions of bidirectional messages every day. More than 100 of these gateways have been installed in India’s smart-lighting systems.

CitiLight estimates that streetlighting consumes as much as forty per cent of the power used by municipal infrastructure, and in many cases implementing smart systems can deliver a return on investment within three years, along with increasing the overall safety of citizens by reducing the number of accidents on the streets.

The installed base of smart street lighting is increasing at a CAGR of 24.8 per cent globally. The 16.2 million smart streetlights operating in 2020 are estimated to increase to 48.8 million by 2025.

“Kerlink and CitiLight plan to grow in India and internationally by designing and deploying smart street lighting projects in Europe and the USA, where we can expect much higher adoption rates for technologically advanced smart lighting,” said Girish Dadheech, vice president of Kerlink in India.

Aman Chawla, CitiLight’s founder, added: “CitiLight’s growth strategy is to develop cutting-edge, intelligent streetlight and IoT that impact lives, which is in line with its mission to impact a billion lives globally by 2025. Both of our companies are leaders in their respective domains and with this collaboration we aim to set benchmarks for deployments and accelerate the pace at which the smart-city lighting projects are executed here and abroad.”

More than 140,000 Kerlink installations have been rolled out with over 350 clients in 70 countries. Based in France, with subsidiaries in the USA, Singapore, India and Japan, Kerlink is a cofounder and board member of the LoRa Alliance and the uCIFI Alliance.

CitiLight is a streetlighting management provider in India. It has amassed smart-lighting projects in 112 municipalities and five smart cities and several other districts in India, and is an OEM partner to Indian and global lighting companies.