Plymouth to get smart with street lighting

Jun 13, 2023

We've agreed a £2.5 million investment into smart street lighting, to help cut carbon emissions and reduce Council energy bills.

The new system will involve installing sensors on lamp posts to provide data that will help us better manage the city's lighting, in terms of safety, energy use and maintenance.

The system will allow the street lighting levels to be controlled more intelligently, being dimmed in certain areas at certain times, or brightened in others, for example during events or if there is an accident or incident.

There is also a significant green saving to be made by upgrading the existing street light infrastructure, with the improvements estimated to save up to 538 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Councillor Jonathan Drean, Cabinet Member for Transport, said: "As a city we have ambitious plans to reduce our carbon footprint while keeping Plymouth safe. At the same time, due to rising energy costs and increased service demand, we are also facing a £37.5m shortfall in our budget next year.

"This new system follows on from our previous programme of replacing all our street lights with LED bulbs, saving both energy and money. It will allow us to control our 27,578 street lights more dynamically, from one web-based system, which means we can be more flexible and efficient.

"I would like to reassure residents that we are keeping the street lights on – but they might be dimmed in certain areas at certain times, when there is either no or low footfall. In some cases this will be barely noticeable – reducing the light level by around 25 per cent, for example, is not usually visible.

"The new system will also allow us to detect and be alerted to any faults instantly so that we can fix issues without having to wait for our maintenance teams or residents to report them. This means faults can be dealt with much more quickly and will make our street lights more reliable.

"This will generate savings of around £500,000 a year for taxpayers and improve their service, while reducing our carbon emissions by an estimated 538 tonnes a year – that's the equivalent of removing 349 cars from our roads.

"This is an exciting project that will use smart city technology to make sure our street lighting network is responsive, reliable and fit for purpose for years to come."

Similar systems are well-used by other councils across the UK, including neighbouring Devon County, Cornwall and Exeter City Councils.

The executive decision to procure and install the new system was approved by Council Leader Richard Bingley on 8 February and may be subject to call-in for scrutiny. You can view the decision here.