Nowadays, street lighting upgrades shouldn’t just involve swapping old high-intensity discharge lighting for LEDs.
Whilst you can get enough benefits from these super-efficient lights, including some decent financial savings, there are many more perks to enjoy when you pair them with a good central management system (CMS).
Allowing users to monitor and maintain their assets remotely, these systems are a quick and easy way to drastically improve the safety, cost and environmental impact of your lighting scheme — at least when you implement them effectively.
Thinking ‘I know what a CMS is, it’s just too much of a headache to develop one’? Here are some reasons to convince you otherwise — and how to introduce yours without the stress…
Reasons to take the plunge
When you use a CMS to switch to remote street lighting management, you can do almost everything you need to do to stay on top of your assets in seconds. For example…
They allow you to rectify more issues faster
One of the biggest advantages of using a CMS to manage your street lighting is being able to detect issues as and when they arise, which is great for community safety. No more waiting for waiting for passers-by to report a fault or finding out there’s a problem once an accident’s already occurred!
Not only this, but a CMS will notify you every time your streetlights aren’t working as they should. So, you can catch more faults and make proactive fixes based on any patterns that emerge. Got a light that plays up every week? You might just find an incorrectly installed EV charger’s to blame…
You’ll be able to adjust lights whenever you like
An effective CMS is a great tool to tweak the lighting output of your assets. Imagine you’ve got motion-detecting CCTV that know there’s nobody using a road due to a closure. With these, you can dim lights that are usually on full brightness (and switch them back again once everything’s returned to normal). Goodbye wasted money and energy!
Equally, a CMS also allows you to make planned changes to your lights ahead of time. Say you know there’ll be more footfall in an area due to a late-night event, like a concert or festival — you can just postpone the adaptive lighting profiles for a few hours.
There are some really exciting opportunities to take advantage of
If you’re interested in the commercial side of things, we’ve got good news. When you equip your streetlights with sensors connected to a CMS, they can tell you exactly where which roads are busiest or, in other words, where’s best for businesses to install advertisements. That’s valuable information…
Plus, as we become more familiar with how to use these systems in lighting design, we imagine the next generation will conjure up some innovative new ways to use them. Just imagine the heights you could reach if your computer-savvy employees put their brains together. Exciting, right?
Most modern streetlights have CMS capabilities, so you probably won’t need to replace your existing inventory to reap all these benefits. But we understand that you might still have concerns about where to begin, so here’s our advice.
How to get started
Usually, implementing a CMS for your street Street lighting is relatively simple. You just install the equipment, connect it to the system and roll it out across your network.
That said, you’ll need to conduct a thorough risk assessment to ensure the changes you’re planning to make with your CMS aren’t dangerous. After all, unless you know which areas need to be lit to which levels and when, how can you dim or trim your streetlights safely?
Many councils and authorities are also busy enough without worrying about how to make effective use of all the information CMS’ present to them — meaning you’ll need to make sure you’ve got trained staff available to digest all the data.
And of course, some organisations struggle to justify the initial cost of a CMS for their lighting schemes. It’s only natural!
But don’t fret.
When you lean on lighting consultants (like DFL), implementing your CMS is straightforward. We can collaborate with you to:
- Deliver a risk assessment based on what’s in your local area.
- Upskill your teams to ensure they’re fully capable of managing your CMS.
- Create a high-level summary report to be signed off by management.
- Leave you with a repeatable process, so you can apply your chosen settings with ease.
- Stay on hand for support whenever you need it.
Plus, we won’t just help you invest in affordable equipment upfront; we’ll also ensure your system seriously improves the cost-effectiveness of your street lighting — potentially saving you more than you spent in the first place. It might not even cost you a thing overall!
Want to know more about how we can help you supercharge your CMS? Talk to us at +44 (0)1962 855090 or email info@dfl-uk.com.
