Signify has completed a large-scale smart pole project in Huanggang City, China, that is tackling carbon emissions while bringing digital transformation benefits.

The project uses connected LED public lighting paired with smart city features for energy efficiency and improved quality of life for citizens.

Dutch firm Signify has supplied LED street lighting, smart poles and a connected lighting system to the industrial parks in Huanggang City in Hubei Province, China. This large-scale smart pole project will enable the province to save energy costs and emissions, while digitalising the urban infrastructure.

“Upgrading municipal lighting to LED represents one of the cheapest and fastest approaches that China is using to achieving its carbon neutral goals,” said John Wang, president of Signify in north-east Asia. “The depth and scale of this project sets a benchmark for smart city construction in China.”

The city opted for Signify’s BrightSites smart poles, Philips LED streetlights and Interact connected lighting system. This combination provides energy-efficient LED lighting, plus two-way communications on a cloud-based platform.

The operations team can optimise street lighting performance and accurately measure energy usage in real time, all from a remote dashboard. This helps the team detect and act on any maintenance needs and optimise usage to bring down costs and energy-related emissions.

Even during daylight hours, the city’s lighting infrastructure is working behind the scenes. The BrightSites smart poles integrate security cameras, environmental sensors, wifi and other devices to collect city data and enable remote management and data analysis, all within a secure network. With this intelligent system in place, city planners can make informed decisions on issues such as urban planning, safety and traffic management, creating a benchmark for future smart city projects.

LED screens integrated within the smart poles can be used to display information for citizens such as the date and time, weather forecast, real-time temperature, or city information.

“Signify’s smart street lighting not only creates a safer and more comfortable environment for staff to travel and work in Huanggang Industrial Park, but also significantly reduces lighting energy consumption and operating costs,” said Shiju Xie, director of the engineering department at Huanggang Rong Construction. “It has laid a solid foundation for the digital transformation and upgrade of the park and the city, and definitely will help boost urban sustainable development and new smart city construction.”

Modernising public lighting in Huanggang Industrial Park and Jinmei Avenue in Huanggang City has helped Hubei Province reduce its carbon footprint and play its part in implementing China’s carbon emissions reduction programme. Under China’s dual-carbon national goals, the country aims to reach peak greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060.

Worldwide, replacing conventional street lighting with energy-efficient LED is an effective way to reduce energy consumption and associated emissions. A city simply switching conventional public lights to LED could expect close to a 50% reduction in energy consumption. When those lights are connected and include dimming and presence detection, the energy savings can be upwards of 90%.