To address the functional and technological transformation of traditional lighting services, Enel X Innovability® Department has designed and validated Adaptive Lighting – an integrated solution focused on lighting streets efficiently, ensuring maximum safety for citizens and savings for administrations. The solution - thanks to video sensors with algorithms based on neural networks - enables the automatic regulation of the power levels of public illumination based on the real time analysis of the traffic, weather and luminosity.

"Public lighting is one of the most relevant city infrastructures: an efficient management of this service by considering its impact on energy consumption and street safety is a key factor in developing smart and sustainable cities"

Sergio Gambacorta, Smart Cities Lead, New Technologies – Innovability® Enel X

To design, develop and test the solution we have followed the Open Innovation approach, involving startups and innovative Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs). We are happy to share the results achieved in our Pomezia lighting test plants thanks to the collaboration with the Italian SME Algorab.

Removing distances with technology

“We started this journey because we wanted to turn our passion into an entrepreneurial adventure. We both felt that much more could be done in the field of remote control applications”, explains the president of the company, Mirko Gremes, who feels that Algorab embodies a spirit of constant innovation and transformation. “Even if we commenced our activity in 1992, we consider ourselves a permanent start-up since we are continually reviewing and renovating our technology in the light of the changing needs of market and the evolution of technology”.

"Being an innovator for us  means being cross-eyed: one eye pointed at current technologies and needs; the other eye pointed at future possible applications and evolutions"

Mirko Gremes, President of Algorab

The company provides, amongst other applications, “a unique and innovative Street Lights Wireless Sensor Network Solution enabling lighting system remote control/management and a smart IoT infrastructure for Smart City services”, explains Gremes. Their solutions can already be found in almost all continents: Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania.

His remote control applications have been developed to be used in several different settings. “Public lighting is currently the wider field of application: cities, tunnels, roads. With the same philosophy, we have developed applications for other outdoor lighting (airports) and indoor lighting in various different contexts: industrial plants, offices, schools, supermarkets”, details Gremes. Another very relevant fields for them of application are broadcasting and the railway sector.

Committed to being at the forefront of technology

We have worked with “open book” approach since the beginning – sharing test bed and technological solution AS IS features and jointly identifying areas of improvement to increase efficiency and resiliency of the project. After around six months of desk analysis, solution fine tuning and on-field validation, we have addressed the industrialization process by inserting Adaptive Lighting solution in e-City Global Portfolio. Algorab has been involved also in go-to-market stage and qualified as a valid partner to deploy the solution.

“Enel included us in their Adaptive Lighting experimentation. The relationship took off with a Technical Partnership Agreement – following an iterative process from solution co-design and experimentation to integration tests into Enel X IoT Platform to commercial offering”, details Gremes. Now, “we are keep on working with Enel X on continuous improvement for the Adaptive Lighting solutions, happy to have defined a common pattern to increase solution resiliency and performance”, he adds.

Together, we are committed to being at the forefront of technology and so we continue experimenting together to discover new applications. “In short, streets lights can be dimmed according to traffic volume and also ambience luminance, so reducing consumption whilst still ensuring road safety”, Gremes sums up. The lighting of the cities of the future is brighter than ever.