To create a smart city, the Australian capital Canberra will connect all street lights to the cloud and become Australia’s largest independent smart city project.
The agency responsible for infrastructure is the Canberra Transport and Urban Services Department (TCCS), which has introduced two technology companies (Itron and Electrix) to achieve an ambitious “Internet of Things” initiative.
It is reported that TCCS will deploy a multi-functional network in the region to manage street lights with a central management software.
Through energy performance contracts, Electrix will operate, maintain and upgrade the streetlight network within seven years.
This innovative model will help TCCS achieve significant energy savings, accelerate the process of achieving environmental goals, minimize investment risk, and help manage fixed annual allocation budgets over the contract period.
In the long run, Canberra will benefit from the Smart City Lab, which will test and develop other smart city solutions such as smart waste management, traffic monitoring, pollution sensing and other applications using the same network platform.
As part of the upgrade, a new digitally controlled maintenance management system will be provided to provide real-time monitoring of the network and automatic detection of lamp failures or cable problems.
