Smart City Helmond

Transforming Helmond with connected intelligent streetlights

Connecting a growing industrial city

Background

Helmond is a historic city in North Brabant, the Netherlands, with about 90,000 residents and more than 25,000 public lighting points. The city is known as a knowledge hub and a living lab for the automotive industry, where many companies design, develop and launch innovative new transport technologies. As a growing industrial city, Helmond has been facing several challenges. First of all, the city needed to find ways to save energy and become more sustainable in its daily operations. Furthermore, the municipality wants to tackle the negative effects that street crime has on public safety and comfort. To achieve these goals as well as to enhance the attractiveness of the city, local authorities have focused attention on improving public street lighting.

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Check out this video to see how Tvilight improved Helmond

Customer Priorities

Saving energy while improving safety

It is known that public safety and street illumination are linked: safer streets are the ones that are well illuminated. However, striving to provide citizens with sufficient lighting levels, cities typically end up with overly-illuminated streets where lights burn for hours without a single living soul around them. In short, cities spend on powering the streetlights that burn for nobody. At the same time, switching off the lights completely is never an option for reasons of public safety. This dilemma is well known to cities worldwide. As much as there is a need to save energy and cut costs, there is also an imperative to put citizens first and ensure their safety and comfort. How can municipalities save energy while ensuring citizen safety with the right amount of light?

“We want to make Helmond a smart city and a great place for people to live and work. Connected intelligent lighting is a logical step towards this goal.”

Alfred Groote, Public Lighting Manager at the Municipality of Helmond

Helmond using intelligent lighting controller Citysense

Solution

In 2013, the city started testing CitySense (Tvilight streetlight sensor) on selected locations and was quickly convinced of the benefits. Today, Helmond counts more than a dozen of intelligent street lighting networks extending across the city and continues to roll-out the solution further.

Because the streets are safely illuminated, the attractiveness of public spaces and the city in general increases. The use of motion-based intelligent street lighting allows the citizens and visitors to experience and enjoy the true “light on demand” and other smart lighting benefits.

Connected lighting makes the roadways, residential neighborhoods, pedestrian zones, bicycle paths, and other areas safe. Illumination is always tailored to the actual human presence. At the same time, the new intelligent street lighting solution helps Helmond reduce its carbon footprint and save energy.