UK firm wins further Australian smart lighting project

Telensa's Planet system has been selected by the city of Darwin to replace close to 10,000 lights on the street and public lighting network with wirelessly connected LEDs. The lights will be controlled by the Telensa Central Management System (CMS) and hosted in Australia by Amazon Web Services.

This project follows a Northern Territory Government initiative to transfer the control of street lights to councils, with some now awarding contracts for LED and smart controls upgrades.

Telensa had been picked last year for a pilot in Maroochydore City Centre on Australia’s Sunshine Coast (link opens in new tab).

Telensa Planet consists of wireless nodes connecting individual lights, a dedicated wireless network owned by the city and a central management application. In total, more than 1.7 million lights are connected to the system around the world.

Telensa said that by selecting a system proven at mass scale across the world, the City of Darwin was able to move directly to full deployment, eliminating the need to run a pilot system.

The system pays for itself in reduced energy and maintenance costs, improves quality of service through automatic fault reporting, and turns streetlight poles into hubs for smart city sensors, said Telensa.

“Key infrastructure projects such as street and public lighting demand the highest standards to ensure reliability and value for money, and Telensa’s proposition more than satisfies both of those criteria,” said City of Darwin chief executive officer Scott Waters. “With Telensa’s Planet system, Darwin will be able to reduce costs whilst improving our street and public lighting service.”

Telensa Founder and Chief Commercial Officer Will Gibson added: “We are excited to be working with City of Darwin to deliver a modern, efficient and resilient street & public lighting system that will effectively respond to the community’s needs for decades to come. Telensa’s flexibility and scalability means that we are able to begin deployment straight away, and we’re looking forward to working with the City of Darwin on low-cost smart city applications which can be enabled by the city’s new lighting network.”

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