Campus in Taipei / Integrating Energy-Saving Streetlights with Campus Safety
- Intelli-EMS
- Jan 5
- 5 min read
Building a Sustainable Campus: A Win-Win for Energy Efficiency and Safety
Case Overview
With the growing global emphasis on sustainable development, our client—a university dedicated to energy transition—is actively promoting energy conservation and carbon reduction. After a comprehensive review of the campus environment, the administration realized there was still room for improvement for transformation in the existing streetlight management model.
As the key hardware provider for this smart lighting control project, we delivered our high-performance "Smart meter switch 2CH". Deployed across the West Campus streetlights and landscape lighting systems, these devices successfully resolved the rigidity of traditional management, which relied solely on timers or manual operation. Furthermore, by visualizing power usage data and streetlight controls, campus administrators can now formulate precise energy improvement policies based on the database, effectively achieving energy saving and carbon reduction goals.
Customer Needs & Challenges
Lack of Management Flexibility and Energy Waste The campus is extensive with widely distributed streetlights. Traditional control methods relying on sunset times or fixed timers could not adapt to special events or weather changes, resulting in unnecessary energy waste or insufficient lighting.
High Maintenance Costs and Difficult Troubleshooting The West Campus and landscape areas cover a vast area. In the past, identifying faulty fixtures relied on reports from students and staff or manual night patrols, leading to low maintenance efficiency and high labor costs.
Insufficient Nighttime Campus Safety The administration places extreme importance on the safety of students and faculty. They required an "On-Demand Lighting" mechanism or immediate emergency lighting at main building entrances and dark corners. Traditional streetlight circuits could not meet the need for such immediate, area-specific control.
Conflict Between "Energy-Saving Schedules" and "Unplanned Usage" To meet energy goals, the university implements schedules to turn off or dim lights during late nights or low-traffic periods. However, students conducting experiments or preparing for activities often leave at irregular hours. If the streetlights have already entered sleep mode, these individuals face total darkness upon stepping out of buildings.
Lighting Up the Night: Building an Active Campus Safety Net with IoT Technology
On a vast campus, nighttime lighting is not just about visibility for the roads; it is a vital source of psychological security for students and faculty.
By introducing Intelli-EMS Smart Wireless Node Technology, this project thoroughly upgrades the level of campus safety protection from three key dimensions:
1. Pioneering "On-Demand Lighting" Mechanism to Eliminate Nighttime Blind Spots
Traditional campus streetlights often operate on fixed schedules for entire zones. However, during late-night hours (e.g., leaving after lab experiments or club activities), certain areas often plunge into darkness due to energy-saving policies. To address this pain point, leveraging the interconnectivity of wireless nodes, we installed streetlight control buttons at main building entrances.
Real-Time Linkage: When students or staff step out of a building and press the button, the signal is instantly transmitted via wireless nodes, forcibly waking up the streetlights in the designated circuit around the building.
Active Guardianship: This design achieves a "light before arrival" guidance effect, ensuring the path from the doorway to the main road is fully illuminated, thereby eliminating the fear of darkness and potential risks.
2. Campus-Wide Wireless Monitoring to Strengthen Management of West Campus & Landscape Areas
For the West Campus and landscape lighting areas with complex terrain, old wiring or remote locations often made them maintenance blind spots in the past.
Blind-Spot-Free Control: By deploying wireless bridge controllers and smart nodes, we have woven originally independent streetlights and landscape lights into a dense IoT network. Whether it is towering pole lights or low-level pathway lights, administrators can monitor their status remotely via a single platform.
Enhanced Response Speed: The system transmits equipment status in real-time. If a malfunction or abnormal outage occurs, the management unit is notified immediately for repair, preventing security blind spots caused by long-term fixture damage.
3. Flexible Scheduling for Sudden Needs to Implement GRI Personal Safety Indicators
Responding to the emphasis on personal safety by the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), our system grants administrators high flexibility in response.
Emergency Response: In the event of large-scale campus activities, severe weather, or emergencies, administrators can control lights remotely via the cloud platform without sending personnel to the site, instantly turning on streetlights in specific areas or the entire campus.
Dynamic Scheduling: Lighting times can be dynamically adjusted based on sunset times, seasonal changes, or the school calendar, ensuring the campus has a sufficient and safe lighting environment whenever there is human activity.
Product
Cloud PLC Wireless Gateway x 10
Smart Meter Switch 1CH x 110
Solution: Intelli-EMS Smart Wireless Node Technology
To address the client's specific requirements, we introduced our Smart Meter Switch 1CH, designed specifically for smart switching applications, to serve as the "nerve endings" of the entire smart streetlight system.
Mesh Network Communication Technology Utilizing advanced Thread mesh networking technology, each streetlight transforms into a signal relay node. This not only extends the transmission distance of a single Smart Meter Switch 1CH to over 30 meters but also ensures stable signal coverage across the vast campus, overcoming the limitations of single-point transmission ranges.
Robust Hardware Design for Outdoor Environments Designed to withstand the variable outdoor conditions of a campus, our node switch features a maximum load capacity of 16A and built-in EN 61000-4-5 Class 2 surge protection (1KV). This effectively prevents equipment damage caused by lightning strikes or voltage instability, ensuring the long-term stable operation of the system.
Flexible Installation and Seamless Integration With its compact design, the device can be directly installed within the ABS waterproof enclosure at the base of the streetlight pole. Through a connection with the on-site wireless bridge, our node switch receives real-time commands from the energy management platform to execute precise switching actions.
Integration of On-Demand Campus Safety Lighting Control The system supports linkage with physical push-button switches. When streetlights are scheduled to be off, students or faculty can press a button at a designated building entrance. Our Smart Meter Switch 1CH responds immediately to force-activate the surrounding streetlights, delivering instant lighting to ensure safety and security.
Intelli-EMS Solution Benefits
By deploying the Smart Meter Switch 1CH and the Cloud PLC Wireless Gateway, the client realized the following significant benefits:
Precise Control and Energy Savings Administrators can remotely adjust streetlight switching schedules based on seasons, the academic calendar, or specific events. This eliminates unnecessary lighting and actively realizes the campus's energy conservation and carbon reduction goals.
Enhanced Campus Safety Network By integrating a manual trigger mechanism, passive lighting infrastructure is transformed into an interactive safety net. In emergencies or during nighttime activities, immediate illumination is guaranteed, significantly boosting campus safety.
Reduced O&M Costs Leveraging IoT technology, streetlight status is transmitted to the management system in real-time. Management teams no longer need to conduct frequent manual patrols to monitor equipment health, drastically improving maintenance response times and overall management efficiency.
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