The main city of St. Gallen is the cultural and economic center of the canton of the same name in eastern Switzerland, with a population of 80,000.
As part of the Energy Concept 2050, the city of St. Gallen formulated more than 150 measures to sustainably improve the quality of life of citizens and the community, respectively.
From looking at new smart city concepts through different technologies all the way to building smart neighborhoods, leaders are tackling digitalization in numerous areas of life.
The city of St. Gallen operates its own full-coverage LoRaWAN network.
The lampposts in St. Gallen had already been converted from classic lamps to modern, energy-saving LED technology a few years ago. However, the energy costs for municipal lighting needed to be further reduced. The forward-thinking approach was to provide dimmable, sustainable lighting while still ensuring good visibility and safety on the road.
Those responsible became aware of the intelligent street lighting solution from Phoenix Contact while looking into this subject. The innovative lighting management portfolio enables switching, light intensity control, and remote monitoring of multiple lights simultaneously.
On the way to becoming a smart city, St. Gallen economically modernized the outdated and inefficient lighting control technology using the established LoRaWAN wireless and IoT technology.
The project uses LoRaWAN-enabled control units and gateways. By networking the control devices in the LoRaWAN network, the existing lights are made smarter and integrated into the world of the Internet of Things.
When installing the LED light sources, a standard was decided upon regarding the interface specification. The Zhaga standard is now used here, so that in the future LED lights can be selected independently of the manufacturer and guaranteed interoperability can be ensured.
Control units with Zhaga sockets from the Phoenix Contact portfolio were used to ensure easy connection to the light heads.
Several street lights were integrated into the Smart Lighting Service in order to implement simultaneous dimming via group command as part of the proof-of-concept project.
The software application enables the St. Gallen Stadtwerke municipal utility company to manage and maintain as well as dim and monitor the street lights remotely – at any time and from anywhere through access via the web portal.
The server structure is comprised of a LoRaWAN server and an application server. The LoRaWAN server allows the integrated LoRaWAN devices to be managed and monitored and also collects their device data. The data is forwarded to an application server in processable form.
Phoenix Contact offers services for integrating both alternatives here. In the application server area, the Smart Lighting Service is made available to the operator as software.
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The decision to install intelligent street lighting saves St. Gallen maintenance and energy costs, conserves resources, and reduces light emissions.
With the innovative light management system in the LoRaWAN network, the street lights emit only as much light as necessary, based on demand. Management via the company’s own web service access is now much more efficient. The municipal utilities always have information on the state of the lights in view.
And what is generally true for the future of smart cities was also shown to be important in this project: the open system architecture of the solution.
