With a population of more than 395,000 (as of June 2023), Christchurch City is the largest urban centre in the South Island of New Zealand. The Christchurch City Council manages many services such as streetlighting, water supply and refuse management. With the population density of 2.8 per hectare across the municipality, it has a total of more than 44,000 streetlights.
In 2017, the Christchurch City Council embarked on a large-scale Smart Streetlight Program to modernize its municipal lighting. Their key project objectives were to:
- Reduce costs to ratepayers
- Reduce electricity consumption
- Reduce lighting maintenance and associated costs
- Improve nighttime visibility
- Provide lighting appropriate for public safety and events
- Establish a platform for deploying future sensors and other smart city applications.
Christchurch City Council chose Itron to design and deploy the Smart Streetlighting solution with the help of the project management service provider, Connetics. The project deployed an Itron IIoT network platform with smart controls along with Streetlight.Vision (SLV) as the solution’s Central Management System (CMS). With the smart controls, Christchurch City Council was able to implement dimming at a variety of different percentages, based on the environment of which the light is placed, for example, the residential settings are generally dimmed more than the arterial or collector roads.
To date, Christchurch City Council has been tracking their carbon reduction of 1150 tonnes per year. Additionally, the upgrading of the streetlights to the smart streetlighting with smart controls is delivering energy savings of more than NZ$1.5 million a year* and reducing the maintenance costs by an estimated NZ$1.2m**. Moving forward with the open standard Itron IIoT network platform, Christchurch City Council is looking to deploy many other smart city applications that will enhance and improve the quality of life of its communities.
Click here to discover the cost savings you can gain from Itron Smart Streetlighting Solution.
*: based on 2023 energy prices
**: during the period of 2019 till 2023
