As of the end of 2023, the total length of roads in China reached 543.68 million kilometers. With the rapid development of urban construction, streetlight infrastructure has become an integral part of urban planning. As a key representative of the city's image, streetlights play an irreplaceable role in improving the quality of the night-time environment.
The rapid growth of streetlight illumination has placed significant pressure on urban energy supply and daily management. Due to the lack of remote control mechanisms, traditional streetlight control is mostly reliant on timed switching, leading to issues such as energy waste, low streetlight uptime, and delayed fault handling. In light of the current rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT), Yibat has launched an automatic streetlight control solution that integrates fault reporting, automatic switching, and remote control functionality.
Traditional streetlight control methods are relatively outdated, mainly relying on manual management or timed relay control. When seasons change, it is necessary to manually adjust the parameters of the timed relays. When adjustments are delayed, issues such as lights being "off when they should be on" or "on when they should be off" often occur.
Based on the existing streetlights, a controller is added, consisting of a micro PLC, a light sensor, a 4G module, and an electricity meter, all connected via an RS-485 bus to ensure the stable operation of the entire control system.
The light sensor acts as the "eye" of the system, collecting real-time illumination data from around the streetlight and transmitting it accurately via the RS-485 transmission cable to the PLC, providing the necessary data for the system. The electricity meter connects to the national power grid, supplying sufficient energy to the system while also collecting real-time energy consumption data, allowing for the monitoring of whether the streetlight is functioning properly.
The 4G module serves as the bridge connecting the system to external information. It enables remote reporting of data to the server and can also retrieve time information and commands from the server. The micro PLC processes the data in the system and serves as the core component. It can determine whether the streetlight should be turned on based on the light sensor data, and after lighting, it compares the illumination data with the pre-lit data to detect potential faults. Additionally, by analyzing the energy consumption data from the electricity meter, it can assist in identifying malfunctioning streetlights. If a fault is detected, the PLC uses the 4G module’s positioning function to report the information to the server for maintenance personnel.
The server is used to monitor control information from each streetlight. Under normal circumstances, it can monitor the status of streetlights, energy consumption, etc. During important holidays, it can remotely control streetlight switching and use the 4G module to report maintenance information, distributing tasks to on-site personnel. The server can also use real-time GPS data to create management dashboards, as well as compile statistics on historical lighting hours, alarm data, and energy consumption.
The streetlight monitoring system is crucial in enhancing the informatization and management of urban streetlights, improving the uptime of streetlights, saving energy, reducing energy waste, and lowering maintenance costs.