Barcelona has been for 3 days the capital of sustainability by hosting the International Smart City Expo World Congress, focused on the sustainable development of the world. Over 32.000 professionals from over 100 countries, have been discovering the latest innovations, trends and technologies in the world of the Smart Cities.
Suiphos has taken part in the third edition of the Brokerage Event, an event created to connect business from around the world and find international partners. This event is based on 25 minute meetings with different participants with common interests and saw Suiphos meeting with companies from Hong Kong that work in the lighting business. These events are very useful and interesting, and have allowed Suiphos to network with successful companies and find new opportunities in the sector.
This sixth edition of the Smart City Expo World Congress has been focused on looking for the available strategies and tools to promote the importance of sustainability and to have a better participation and input in the design process of municipalities. Top speakers were Ellen MacArthur, Susan Etlinger, Parag Khanna, David Bollier, Kent Larson and David Harvey.
“This is the only event capable of gathering that many cities and business. Smart City Expo combines business and knowledge with the aim of encouraging new projects that make our cities better places for the citizens and the planet” said the president of the event, Ramón Roca.
These are the three top things that you can do with Suiphos’ lighting management software.
You’ll have an inventory where you’ll be able to visualise all the lighting points and the electric panels. Each lighting point contains a complete file with the information about the lamp type, the electric power, the height and all the modifications and repairs that have been done to that specific lighting spot. Furthermore, you can create a work order from a specific lighting spot and edit, duplicate or delete it.
Through the platform, you can get repair claims from all the channels that you have previous set up. These channels can be email, telephone, social networks of the professional maintenance reports.
The workers can visualise work orders in order to repair a breakdown, to replace a lamp or to carry on regular maintenance activities.
The light meter maps provide the Information needed about the light intensity from each lighting spot, from 3 to over 50 lux. Through this tool, we can see the progress of the changes and improvements to the lighting system, as well as finding the areas where adjustments and improvements are required.
The reporting section is an unique functionality of SECE which makes Suiphos a complete platform for Business Intelligence Analysis. You can create very helpful forecast models that will help to find out what the lighting level should be in order to cut costs, to monitor the life cycle of the existing inventory, to check if work orders are successfully completed etc.
Through this functionality, you will be able to improve your productivity levels by creating analytical models which can be used to analyse your own data in an interactive way, as well as generating reports and visualising the data. With Suiphos you can create, manage and distribute paginated reports, provide access to thorough data visualization and more with the objective of converting the data into intelligent actions in order to improve business knowledge and hence create new strategies and understand the strengths and weaknesses of the business.
Normally, lighting installations in both public and private sector have great saving potential. The energy consumption is usually quite high due to the lighting models or because of the age of facilities. This results in poor use of the lighting energy, poor energy efficiency and generates high illumination pollution levels. This is why it is convenient to carry out regular checks on illumination facilities in order to reduce consumption, cost and improve maintenance.
There are several solutions for reaching these objectives. On one hand, we can modify all the physical elements that compose lighting installations: lamps, switching on/off systems, flux regulators, luminaires etc. in order to substitute the eldest and least efficient equipment with modern and optimized equipment that helps to make the most of the energy resources and reduce pollution.
In the private sector, both in transport, construction and industry, correct management of lighting installations can mean an energy saving of up to 20%. Thanks to Suiphos, you can have real time control by time zones, areas and personal reports that help to implement actions to control spend and optimise the use of the energy resources. .
In the industrial sector, governments try to encourage activities to reduce the energy consumption and Dioxide emissions. Suiphos can develop cost saving and efficiency projects for the industrial sector by personalising consumption alerts, cost assignation or real-time control of the production line.
Another private sector where Suiphos could be a great help to achieve better energy efficiency is in construction. Being able to divide the consumption between different time zones, common areas or passive consumption helps to be able to create a control plan to measure spend in order to optimise the resources and reduce the costs up to a 20%.
The willingness of governments, companies and citizens to achieve higher energetic efficiency has risen during the 19th Century. A century in which society has become more and more concerned about the negative effects of unlimited energy consumption. This is no longer sustainable in environmental and economic terms. Today we are going to talk you through energy efficiency in the world of lighting.
According to the European Commission, the definition of energy efficiency is “the relation between the production of a service, good or energy and the spent of the energy.” Supporting efficiency is helping the sustainability of the planet, which every day gets closer to risky levels of emissions produced by the combustion of fossil fuels.
Energy audits run by companies in order to reduce energy consumption are becoming increasingly strict in order to comply with environmental goals. In 2011, the European Union approved the Energy Efficiency Plan with the objective of reaching a supply of sustainable energy and reduce the emission of greenhouse effect gasses produced by fossil fuels (petroleum, gas and coal) which are to blame for climate change.
Energy efficiency can be applied in different ways depending on different sectors. Something which is common to all sectors is lighting. Lighting energy consumption has great cost-saving potential, for example, within a council, over 50% of total energy consumption comes from public lighting.
According to the Technic Guide of Energy Efficiency in Illumination by the Diversification and Energy Saving Institute (IDAE) and by the Illumination Spanish Committee (CEI), public lighting in Spain uses a total of around 2900 GWh/year, which is 1.8% of the whole national energy consumption and is responsible of the emission to the atmosphere of 1.740.000 Tm. of CO2 per year.
This sector has a potential cost saving of 10%. Why? Because of low adoption of new technologies of energy efficiency in lighting to date, and also because the lighting levels of most installations exceed the recommended levels.
To assure energy efficiency in illumination, the night lighting levels must be regulated in order to control the illumination of the night sky. How? Applying some rules for illumination and choosing photometric lamps for the pavement and limiting the times of the use during the night and reducing allowed lighting levels during night hours.
Environmental sustainability allows you to satisfy the needs of current generations without affecting the future of upcoming ones, whilst supporting economic and social progress and respecting natural ecosystems and the quality of the environment.
Environmental sustainability is those actions focused on maintaining the diversity and productivity of natural resources over time. That means that humans should work to preserve natural resources encouraging others to respect ecology and the environment where they live.
Local governments, NGOs, environmental agencies… All the organisations responsible for promoting the development of a sustainable development of the economy and society, so humanity can be in harmony with the resources of its environment.
The best way to realise sustainable thinking comes from only using renewable resources. This is one of the actions taken by private and public sectors in order to become sustainable and save energy.
Light Bulb on Grass
One of the main applications of environmental sustainability to reduce the energy spent within the lighting sector is the introduction of LED technology. Based on a study carried by the Rensselaer Polytechnic institute, if all regular lightbulbs were replaced by LED bulbs around the world, the carbon usage would be reduced by 153 million kilolitres, and the dioxide emissions to the atmosphere would be dramatically decreased. On top of that, there would be a world saving of $1.93 billion.
All the benefits from LED bulbs are directly related to the reduction of the environmental impact: they are recyclable, hence less trash going to landfills. Its energy efficiency means large savings in energy resources and in CO2 emissions. One single LED bulb avoids the emission of 10 kilos of CO2 in a year.
In the lighting market there are so many different products that use the LED technology in place regular lighting. This makes lighting more efficient and reduces maintenance costs, as LED bulbs last longer.
Lighting management through Suiphos, means that you can measure energy use in real time. With this information, consultants can optimise their energy spend and identify failures in order to improve the service. This increases the efficiency of the lighting network and reduces CO2 emissions, in favour of environmental sustainability.
Suiphos is a lighting management tool that will help you to manage both private and public lighting.
Thanks to this platform, there are over a million lighting spots managed. This management includes the measurement of energy usage in real time. This information allows the consultants to optimise the control and electric use of the lighting spots, offering a detailed point of view of the system. This helps to identify failures in order to improve the service. This increases the efficiency of the lighting network in order to improve the service, and reduces CO2 emissions.
Suiphos has a solid and reliable background, as it is a platform with over 30 years of solvency and over 400k lighting points managed across Spain and Chile.
Suiphos is based in one solid data structure that is accessible from several different platforms: desktop, web, mobile, tablet… Also, from the other side, from one single website you can get access to all the management units: inventory, operations, analysis, reporting, energy management…
The georrefered inventory is based on a basic GIS. Unlike other existing solutions that use map technology such as Google Maps or similar, GIS solutions allow you to have more detailed data, with higher precision and easier to connect with municipal platforms.
The analysis and report generation allows you to analyse and predict the energy use of your lighting network. This way you can optimise the spend and the maintenance costs.
On top of that, the platform integrates a mobile unit that allows users to manage work orders in real time by using a tablet. This way you can optimise response times and lighting system can be managed in a more efficient way.
In public administration, Suiphos offers public entities the opportunity to tackle one of the biggest problems they have: spend management. Suiphos helps to control the spend in lighting by dividing it across different time zones, common zones or by identifying passive combustion in order to optimise the use of energetic resources and reduce costs up to 20%.
In commercial networks, Suiphos solves the problem of having several selling points in different geographic areas. With Suiphos you have centralised control, with real time reports and the possibility of implementing optimisation plans step by step.
The industry provides personalised usage alerts, cost control and other features that allow consultants to evaluate, optimise and reduce energetic costs.
The improvement of efficiency and energy savings is a priority, not only for the public administration, but also in the different economic sectors: commerce, transports, health, hospitality, education and industry… Power efficiency is a must that applies to all kind of installations. In the European Union there is a common aim to improve energy efficiency and there are some specific actions to be carried in order to reach an acceptable level of energy savings.
Over the last few years, and thinking about climate change and the consumption of the natural resources of our planet, more and more legislation considers taking care of these aspects and how to improve the energy efficiency as a top priority in several countries.
You´ll find below a series of reasons that demonstrate the importance of periodically evaluating public lighting installations, in order to measure their efficiency.
To know and improve the efficiency and energetic savingFor example, within a council, over a 50% of the total consumption is taken by public lighting. This is why it is worth investing in more efficient lighting that uses a minimum amount of electricity.
The next reasons why you should evaluate lighting installations is to know how much is used in each point and where can we find “black spots” in energy use and lighting levels. The correct type of light should be chosen for each situation and each part of the city, depending on what you’re trying to achieve.
Renewable lighting and maintenance projects for public lighting require expensive investments. It is important to define an action plan to identify which actions need to be taken in order to optimise the energy use by spending the least possible.
Public lighting installations require an evaluation process in order to avoid overspending in maintenance. It is important as well to keep in mind the duration of the guarantee.
As you have read, public lighting installations are a very important aspect of our daily life. The correct use and maintenance of these installations not only assures our security while the sun is down, but also allows us to improve the sustainability of our planet.
When improving energy efficiency, we decrease the costs of the energy and we contribute towards building a society based in the sustainable development actions we need to apply in order to secure a future for upcoming generations.
The concept “smart city” has arrived to our society in a very notorious way. It looks like all kinds of businesses and public administrations are now jumping on the bandwagon of building sustainable cities to guarantee a better quality of life for society. Smart Cities allow for a better and more sustainable use of natural resources.
Basically the term “Smart city” refers to a kind of city built on the principle of developing a more sustainable environment, and not only in economical terms, but also in social and especially environmental.
These cities must invest in human capital like energetic infrastructures, technology for communications and transportation in order to be able to be called “smart cities”. Modern cities should focus on improving quality of life for the citizens, always keeping in mind that they should follow a model that is sustainable and efficient in terms of energy, contributing to the sustainable development of the whole planet.
In Spain there is a Spanish Network of Smart Cities (RECI) that gather all local territories that are using information and communication technologies (TIC) to add value to their cities. Their objective is to generate a wide Spanish network of smart cities, which aim for social progress by creating an efficient management of the infrastructures and urban services, as well as the reduction of the public costs and the improvement of the services quality, thus attracting economic activity and stimulating progress.
Nowadays, RECI is formed of 62 cities and it’s open to welcome more Smart Cities. To be able to carry on with this growth, Smart cities are supporting creative industries and high technology, always respecting the strategic plans that allow them to improve the innovation system at a local level.
Over the upcoming years, we will notice an improvement in the life of all citizens, reaching in this way a cohesive society capable of attracting a society of talented individuals. Although this is not an easy road. During the World Smart City Forum, it was confirmed that cities must be capable of being in charge of some specific sensitive points such as water and energy supply and the removal of pollution caused by transport networks. The development of an innovative space that encourages talent, opportunities and life quality in an urban environment must be the result of the collaboration between local resources, helping to improve collaboration, coordination between members of the community and avoiding competition for resources.
