Signify is transforming one of Spain’s island roads into a smart highway with the company’s Interact City system.
The Gran Canaria South Highway, GC-1, on Spain’s Canary Islands archipelago, carries more than 100,000 vehicles a day, and connects capital Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and its international airport to tourist destinations on the island’s south side.
The highway was illuminated with Philips TrafficVision streetlights - 400W sodium luminaires - in 1990.
As these reached the end of their lifetime, the Cabildo, the island’s governing council, moved to improve lighting performance and reduce energy consumption.
It chose Philips DigiStreet LEDs, with an output of 32,000 lumens and standardised Zhaga connectors, and which provide a 2700K colour temperature.
These were matched with Interact City connected lighting software, data from which can be combined with data from other connected systems.
Incident detection uses sensors on light poles to continually monitor and alert emergency services when unexpected traffic, sounds or crowd noise is detected.
Data is shared over the Interact IoT platform and long-term data collection supports predictive analytics to anticipate and reduce problems on the road.
“This helps the Cabildo to gain insights into issues to support decision-making and act where possible,” said Josep Martínez, Signify’s market lead for the Iberia area.
The system allows for simple maintenance, point-by-point management and enables real-time adjustment to deal with any situation on the highway. For example, increasing light in an area where an accident has occurred or dimming the lights to 30% when no vehicles are on the road.
The street lighting system also offers the Cabildo new connected capabilities as time goes on, according to Signify.
The lighting upgrade also helps to respect the island’s biodiversity and reduces CO2 emissions and the island’s carbon footprint without compromising road safety and driving experience.
“We have developed a clear and sustainable project for our lighting system,” said Antonio Morales, president of the Cabildo de Gran Canarias.
“Upgrading to the Philips DigiStreet LEDs with Interact City results in economic savings of installed power with 50%, amortising the cost of installation in less than the luminaires’ lifetime.”
With Interact City, the Cabildo de Gran Canarias can monitor the lighting in real time, collect and analyse data and assign maintenance tasks. Meanwhile, the Philips DigiStreet LEDs avoid glare and render colours accurately at the darkest of times.
