Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ:ELON) announced today that the City of Palo
Alto is demonstrating smart, energy efficient streetlights based on
Echelon’s LonWorks® technology. The City aims to reduce
energy and maintenance costs and lower greenhouse gas emissions, while
improving light quality. Currently, the city’s 6,300 streetlights cost
around $700,000 annually in energy and maintenance costs.
Streetlights networked with Echelon’s intelligent controls make
the lights themselves smarter. The lights are able to communicate with
maintenance and management software. They can also be remotely
dimmed, monitored and controlled. The combination of command and control
for individual lights and an ability to communicate with expert systems
can reduce a city’s energy consumption, light pollution levels, and the
operating and maintenance costs associated with streetlights.
The demonstration compares the energy efficiency of new lighting
technologies, including LED and induction, with the existing high
pressure sodium lights. The city plans to replace all 6,300 streetlights
by 2015, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 600 to 950 metric tons per
year, or the equivalent of removing approximately 120 cars from the road
for a year. The project is in line with the City’s Sustainability Policy
and the Climate Protection Plan.
“Palo Alto is committed to implementing cost-effective
energy efficiency measures and has been a leader in
implementing new energy saving technologies. New
streetlight technologies offer the benefits of reducing energy usage,
reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and has the potential to improve
overall light distribution and visibility on Palo Alto
streets,” said Shiva Swaminathan, senior resource planner, City of Palo
Alto.
“Echelon’s technology has been proven to reduce energy use in
streetlights, and every city needs to reduce expenses at this moment,”
said Anders Axelsson, Echelon’s senior vice-president of sales and
marketing. “The technology allows cities to not only cut energy costs,
but also cuts maintenance costs while improving light quality,
decreasing light pollution, and providing increased safety.”
Both of the cities of San Francisco and San Jose have recently announced
similar streetlight demonstrations using Echelon’s LonWorks intelligent
control technology and LED lights.
